How your life will change if you remove almost all applications from your smartphone

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Personal experience of an American designer who once decided that the iPhone would no longer steal his attention.

Smartphones not only make our lives easier, but also kill productivity. When chatting with friends or working, the gadget takes away some of our attention. We read notifications, check emails, correspond. It impairs concentration, interferes with difficult tasks, and ruins relationships.

One day, American designer and writer Jake Knapp noticed the destructive effect of a smartphone on his life. Then he simply removed all distracting apps from his iPhone. And everyone can follow his path.

Jake Knapp Designer and writer.

In 2012, I realized I had a problem. My iPhone made me nervous. He called me from his pocket, as the Ring of Power called Bilbo Baggins.

How Jake Knapp removed all apps from his smartphone

In Russia, Jake Knapp is best known as the co-author of the book Sprint. How to develop and test a new product in just five days. His story began quite corny - in 2007, the beautiful and shiny first iPhone came out, and Knapp wanted it. At the same time, the smartphone had mail, a browser and even an investment application, so that its purchase could be justified by its usefulness for work.

Gradually, Knapp installed new applications on the iPhone: Facebook, Instagram, news, games - the standard set of any smartphone owner.

Jake Knapp

More mailboxes to check and more feeds to read. Each app clung to my brain, tying my phone to my skull with an invisible thread.

One evening, Knapp was playing with the children, and the eldest son asked him, "Dad, why are you looking at the phone?" Then Jake realized that he didn’t know why and didn’t even remember how the phone ended up in his hands. He dreamed all day to be with the children, but when that moment came, he focused not on them, but on the smartphone.

When Knapp dug into himself, he realized that he didn't need the iPhone as a tool. He wanted the smartphone to improve his life, he wanted to control this gadget of the future, to possess it not for the sake of benefit, but simply for the sake of possession. Then Jake got angry and decided that the iPhone would no longer steal his attention.

Jake Knapp

I have deleted Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Removed YouTube and all games. Then I opened preferences and uninstalled Safari.

Knapp left the email because he loved it very much: he sent his first email in the 1990s and even worked on the design of Gmail. But in fact, it was the mail that was his main distraction. She stole time and attention, hiding behind the importance of "for work." As a result, Knapp deleted Gmail as well.

Only 60 seconds - and he found himself alone and isolated. Jake began to feel uneasy, so he convinced himself that this was just an experiment. He will try to live a week without applications, and then he will return everything back.

The first few days were weird. Knapp unlocked the phone, but then remembered that there was nothing to check. This unusual sensation brought peace. The head became freer, and time seemed to slow down so that Knapp could do more.

As a result, Jake liked this state of freedom so much that the experiment, calculated for a week, dragged on for years. During this time, Knapp wrote several articles about his experiences and detailed six years of living with a non-distracting smartphone. The articles caused a great resonance on the Internet. Some called their author "a self-righteous idiot without self-control," but many followed suit and removed at least a couple of applications.

At the same time, the iPhone itself remained a useful device for Jake. Knapp used it to listen to music and podcasts, translate in Google Translate, talk to Siri, use maps and take pictures. He simply removed what distracted him from his smartphone.

Jake Knapp

If I had been given this device when I was a kid, in the 1980s, I would have gone crazy with delight. The distraction-free iPhone is a futuristic tool that I control. This is what I really wanted all this time.

Of course, there were some casualties. Knapp has lost his reputation as someone who responds instantly to emails or completes a task immediately upon admission. He became less likely to use Facebook and lost touch with some of his friends. But instead he began to devote more time and attention to his wife and children, and this was the most important for Jake.

Two months ago, I myself deleted all applications with notifications from my smartphone, except for work chats and e-mail - they rarely write to me there and only the most important. Of course, two months is not six years, but already in the first week I felt a serious improvement. Now the smartphone does not distract me at all during work, and in my free time I read or communicate with my family instead of hanging out on social networks. And I don't even want to install applications back.

What results did a non-distracting smartphone help to achieve?

It would seem that removing critical applications would hinder efficiency. Knapp was ready for this because he made the iPhone non-distracting so he could spend more time with his family.

But it turned out that without being distracted by other people's tasks and messages, it became much easier for him to find time for really important projects. As a result, Knapp completed a bunch of tasks that he put off "for later", wrote and published two books.

The merit of the non-distracting smartphone in this is enormous. Studies by the German Institute of Psychology at the University of Humboldt show G. Mark, D. Gudith, U. Klocke. The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress / In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, that a person needs at least 23 minutes to focus on a task after a break. And if a lot of applications are installed on your smartphone, you most likely will never focus, as notifications will come even more often than once every 23 minutes.

2 Hour Experiment from Knapp

It is unlikely that you will be able to decide to immediately delete all applications from your smartphone forever. Therefore, Knapp recommends trying not even a week, but a two-hour experiment, consisting of several steps.

1. Decide what you need to focus on. Knapp wanted to communicate more with his family. What do you want? Concentrate on work, study and self-development? Record your priorities.
2. Let others know about it. Warn your friends and colleagues that you will not be available in instant messengers all the time. If you need something urgently, let them call.
3. Remove social media apps. You can always access your accounts from a computer or tablet, so you won't lose them.
4. Remove news apps. You can also find out the news from a computer, and sometimes it is not necessary at all.
5. Uninstall all games and video apps (YouTube, Netflix, etc.)
6. Remove web browsers. Sometimes you need to rummage through the settings for this.
7. Delete email and all instant messengers, including those needed for work.
8. Leave the phone there for two hours and see what happens.

If this sounds too scary for you, try to remove at least a couple of applications, for example, from the number of games or social networks. And remember, this is not a monastic vow: you can always re-establish everything. As Knapp's experience shows, such thoughts are calming and make it much easier to quit apps.

To read more about Jake's experiment and ideas for saving time and attention, see Find the Time.