One Simple Thing: Put Productive Apps On Your Home Screen

The average person checks their phone 46 times a day, or about every 30 minutes.

Often these checks are habitual responses to notifications, pulling up pointless games to pass the time, or (at least for me) looking up random pieces of trivia to satisfy an intellectual itch.

Forty six glances results in a lot of time spent staring at your phone each day.

Imagine if what you saw each of those times encouraged you to be a better person?

Here's my current homescreen:

All of these apps are ones that I use on a regular basis, and most are ones that enhance my life.

While I don't love having Outlook or Slack on my homescreen, they are work-critical so it's nice to have within reach.

The rest of the apps let me stay organized, learn something new every day, or keep me in touch with friends and family.

The one glaring exception is Twitter. While I'm trying to kick my social media habit by keeping all of those time-sucking apps off of my homescreen and my entire phone if I can manage it (Twitter is just a website shortcut), Twitter earned its place because the impeachment hearings have been so damn interesting lately!

Is this setup perfect? No, absolutely not. But it's what fits my life at the moment.

In comparison, I published a very simlar article to this one back in 2016, and this is what my screen looked like then:

There are some major differences, the most obvious being that I've de-Googled my life substantially over the last 3 years.

Only three apps are even still there:

1. Todoist
2. Slack
3. Phone

I imagine in another three years my homescreen will once again change dramatically!

So, during your 34th glance at your homescreen today, take stock in what's there. Do those applications enhance your life? Or do they suck away the precious little time you have on this wonderful blue dot we call Earth?

The One Thing: Reorganize your home screen, filling it with apps that add value to your life.