Yesterday’s Infomagical Challenge centered around the joy of tidying up your phone. The idea was to take a look at every app on your smartphone and think about whether or not it made you happy and productive. If it didn’t, see ya! The app is gone and your home screen is a little less cluttered. The remaining apps were then all placed into a single folder that made your phone a sparkling monument to minimalism.
The first time I took the challenge, I couldn’t bring myself to stuff all of my apps into one folder — but I did bring it down to six: iPhone Apps, Google Apps, Self-Improvement, Entertainment, Capitalism, Other. And it wasn’t a bad system. I pared down so many of my apps and seriously cut down on the number of times I got an app just to try out for something. But still, I couldn’t quite understand how much pushing my phone to its bare minimum would change my experience with it.
Now, I have to search for every app that I want to open. I have an iPhone, so there’s a Spotlight-type feature that brings up a search bar, my most recently opened apps, and a few other “suggested” items from Siri. It actually works quite well — if I’m dipping into Twitter or Telegram via my phone it’s right there, but if I want to play a game or dig up a utility app it forces me to engage the experience with intention and purpose. Which is great. It cuts down on the ease with which I can distract myself through my phone, which makes me pay attention to not only how often I have that impulse, but how often I act on that impulse.
Here’s my home screen now. Beautiful, simple, with just the cutest face staring back at me reminding me to “Be mindful.” I may not keep my phone like this forever, but I’ll definitely aim to cut down on the clutter.
Now that I’ve conquered my phone, I’m thinking about doing the same with my tablet and desktop — minimalism for all of my devices! Making sure that there’s only one application open at a time will help with single-tasking, and getting rid of the ‘default’ apps on my taskbar will help remove distraction and cut down on automatic behavior…which is the whole point of the Infomagical Challenge. For someone like me, this is a godsend.
Which brings us to today. The challenge is to avoid memes, articles, videos and anything else online that does not get you closer to your information goal. If your goal is to be more creative, anything that stirs the muse within you is fair game — but nothing else. If your goal is to become more knowledgeable on a topic, read or watch to your heart’s content…as long as it’s about the topic you’re trying to learn about. Everything else? Resist it. Imagine there’s a little Gandalf holding the bridge to your attention. And the Big Bad Balrog of Distraction is trying to consume your precious synapses. Will Gandalf let that slide? HELL NO. And neither will you. Engage with the Internet mindfully today. With a single-minded productive purpose. See how it feels to confront your fear of missing out. It might not be so bad!
If you’re just learning about the Infomagical Challenge, here are a couple of links that will get you up to speed really well:
Day 0: The Case for Infomagical
Day 1: Single-Tasking
Day 2: A Magical Phone
Also, shout out to Note to Self (a wonderful podcast) for organizing the Infomagical Challenge as well as their previous project, Bored and Brilliant.
See you lovely folks tomorrow! Did you minimalize your phone or desktop? Share a picture with me. 🙂
