Following on from my previous post on minimalizing my flat, I got the urge to minimalize my iPhone screens.
The amount of time I waste scrolling through my home screens looking for an app probably adds up to hours a year. I had 5 screens with countless apps and no real order to them. The only ‘order’ was the order in which I downloaded them.
Assume that I look for an app I use frequently eg. Whatsapp or iMessage and 10 times a day, and assume it takes 5 seconds each time to find it, that’s 50 seconds per app per day just to find the thing! That’s almost 6 mins a week just to find one app!
It’s not just the time waste. It’s the clutter and lack of order on my screens that I look at countless times a day. Chaos.
It was time to declutter my apps. Get rid of those I didn’t use and be ruthless about the cull. The cull still left a lot of apps and certainly more than could comfortably sit on one screen, so I started to make folders on my home screen. My aim was to get to just one screen of apps. This is what I ended up with:
It might still seem a bit busy (I know people who would freak out about the number of notifications on the mail apps!), but it’s a massive improvement for me having just one screen instead of five. And having some order on my apps, like messenger apps all together instead of scattered.
Another unforeseen benefit is that it’s harder to find apps that I can spend a long time in such as Instagram or the FT. Having them harder to find saves me time daily and therefore over the long term.
What do your phone screens look like? Are you tidy or messy with your apps? Let me know in the comments below!
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