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My year with a distraction-free iPhone

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Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#141

Post by computerjunkie »

During my visit to South Africa and Zimbabwe, I realised that we take internet for granted In Europe and America. All my colleagues who work there generally have 3 to 4 (maximum) applications on their smartphone and they never constantly look at their phone all the time. Data is ridiculously expensive there and watching Youtube videos regularly is a non starter. Unlimited internet is pricy because its still new so everybody purchases bundles. Just using you smartphone there teaches if you really want to spend x amount of data on a short video clip.

It made me realise that I had to make a change. I depend on the internet/technology and I personally think that's scary. I'm gradually cutting out applications, I think the big shift from being connected to not being connected would just cause a relapse. Right now Twitter,Facebook, HN are not on my smartphone anymore and I feel much better already.

I have a lot more time now and its quite shocking how people are still productive these days with the insert next trending application coming out every week.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#142

Post by losvedir »

throwawayMGWC wrote: post #94

(Posting using a throwaway as I changed my noprocrast settings in HN as mentioned in these comments and ironically blocked my account for the day!) Somewhat related, I've come to a similar conclusion myself recently but via app fatigue instead. I've been running a Windows Phone for over a year now, and although I loved the OS, constant remarks regarding the app gap made me wonder if I was missing out on the full smar…

That's an interesting idea. I'd never considered Windows Mobile before, but since I, too, don't really need much in the way of apps (just the ones you mention), maybe I should look into it.

Any idea how well a Windows mobile phone can integrate with a household that's predominantly Mac?

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#143

Post by joesmo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #72
baddox wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why turn the ringer completely off? Surely it's worth getting "distracted" by communication from friends and family. The only reason I can see this as a good idea is if you get a lot of bogus calls, or you know people who call/text you a ton.

I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk. This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now). There was even a time when answering machines didn'…

Totally agree. The most egregious violators of such calls are recruiters. Put your phone number on a resume and submit it to a few sites, assuming you work in IT, and they will call non-stop. Sometimes, I refuse the call and they keep calling back a few more times. Nowadays, I only pick up calls from people I recognize. Google has started to provide "caller ID" for many businesses that don't have it now, which helps also.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#144

Post by DanBC »

joesmo wrote: post #143
dredmorbius wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk. This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now). There was even a time when answering machines didn'…

Totally agree. The most egregious violators of such calls are recruiters. Put your phone number on a resume and submit it to a few sites, assuming you work in IT, and they will call non-stop. Sometimes, I refuse the call and they keep calling back a few more times. Nowadays, I only pick up calls from people I recognize. Google has started to provide "caller ID" for many businesses that don't have it now, which helps…

A disposable phone number and a fake resume would gather plenty of data for a blog post - especially if there were some particularly bad recruiters.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#145

Post by lukethomas »

Up until 6 months ago, I used a flip-phone because I didn't want the distractions that I noticed with friends (constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

I finally gave in when I moved and would constantly get lost (I needed maps).

I really like this article, but I see opportunity in short digital breaks. The truth is that the majority of people won't delete infinity apps. They don't have the self-control to do it.

That's why I'm building an app (Android-only) to temporarily disable distracting apps.

You can check it out, I'd love feedback -> http://www.digitaldetoxapp.com

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#147

Post by computerjunkie »

yodsanklai wrote: post #140
Gracana wrote: post #11

As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do. But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur ) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad…

To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world. At least, hacker news is informative and the comments are of high-quality. However, I wish I was able to read some articles more thoroughly rather that passively browse.

Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage.

What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating.

I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#148

Post by mcjiggerlog »

lukethomas wrote: post #145

Up until 6 months ago, I used a flip-phone because I didn't want the distractions that I noticed with friends (constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I finally gave in when I moved and would constantly get lost (I needed maps). I really like this article, but I see opportunity in short digital breaks. The truth is that the majority of people won't delete infinity apps. They don't have the self-control to do it.…

Looks great! Will we be able to choose which applications we are allowed to use? For example, everybody I know uses whatsapp exclusively for messaging so my phone would be pretty useless with SMS only.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#149

Post by lukethomas »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #148
lukethomas wrote: post #145

Up until 6 months ago, I used a flip-phone because I didn't want the distractions that I noticed with friends (constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I finally gave in when I moved and would constantly get lost (I needed maps). I really like this article, but I see opportunity in short digital breaks. The truth is that the majority of people won't delete infinity apps. They don't have the self-control to do it.…

Looks great! Will we be able to choose which applications we are allowed to use? For example, everybody I know uses whatsapp exclusively for messaging so my phone would be pretty useless with SMS only.

For the first version, it only allows calling/texting - however, I'm going to have WhatsApp whitelisted because I know it's a popular messenger replacement :)

In the future, I'd love to give people different "packages" (ie. - Uber, Lyft, Instacard, etc) as not all apps are distracting.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#150

Post by kareemm »

BrandonM wrote: post #106
kareemm wrote: post #48

Tried this, and one of the big difficulties is that I send email to my todo list manager to create todos ("pick up milk", "Email person about important_thing"). I don't want to give this up, but can't find an app that only sends email. So when I opened Mail to send a todo email, I'd see all the new emails that were begging to be read. I could create a new email account that I use for sending only, but that seems like…

Couldn't you use a dedicated todo app like Remember the Milk?

I use Goodtodo but emailing in todos is faster than using the native app.

Couldn't find any apps that worked so ended up creating a receive-only account that gets no email and using that as my incoming account. My outgoing account is my normal Gmail account. Will be interesting to see how things go without email on my phone.

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