How to Use Your Phone Better

The fastest way to cut phone use is to make the things you do not want easy to reach. If an app is on the home screen it will be opened, usually without deciding to. Almost every phone is better with one dock row, a small number of folders, and social apps moved off the first screen entirely.

• Keep the home screen for tools you chose, not defaults you accepted.
• Turn off every badge. The red number is a mechanism for pulling you in, not a fact you need.
• Use one home screen. Swiping between pages you built for a week you do not remember is friction, not organisation.
• Put the most-used three in the dock so they open without searching, and everything else into folders by function.

• Notifications: allow only from actual people. Everything else goes off, and the world will not end.
• Set app limits for the two or three that take the most. The limit works, and you can override it when it is genuinely needed.
• Turn off background refresh for apps you do not check constantly. It saves battery and reduces interruptions.
• Use Do Not Disturb or Focus during the parts of the day you want to be unreachable.
• Check battery usage monthly and disable the worst offender. This is usually a single app using most of it.

• Use the built-in screenshot markup for quick, annotated notes instead of opening an editor.
• Save voice memos for anything you would otherwise forget. Speaking is faster than typing and leaves your hands free.
• Use a timer or focus mode for anything that requires you to stop scrolling and start one thing.
• Set a deliberate 'down time' schedule so the last twenty minutes of the day is not spent in a feed.
• Charge it somewhere other than the bedside if it is waking you up.