While smartphones have brought many positive things, such as minimizing distances and access to information, it has some negatives too. Phones were initially needed in old-fashioned days so individuals could converse with each other without heading out a massive number of miles to communicate face to face. Nowadays, however, the primary usage of smartphones is anything but talking.
We are constantly on our phones, either browsing the internet, endlessly scrolling social media, taking selfies, or more. So we need to think about how we can mindfully use our iPhones?
Your job may demand you to finish work on your PC, remain associated with those distant, and potentially become familiar with new things – thanks to the technology. However, when it doesn’t seem like you can go five minutes without your phone, this is the point at which you should think about rolling out specific improvements.
Good news for iPhone users, here are our best recommendations to have a more mindful relationship with your iPhone. Let’s get started.
1. Make a Minimalist Home Screen
Contemplate the influx of messages, alarms, and notifications you are welcomed with when you open your iPhone. Instead of unlocking your phone to a barrage of notifications, why not make a mess-free space in which you experience just the things you want? You can do this by mindfully putting together your home screen.
In the first place, sort your applications into three types:
- Tools (i.e., alarms, maps, Uber)
- Aspirations – things you might want to invest more time on (iBooks, Podcasts, Fitness Apps), and
- Distractions – any application that could inadvertently divert you and doesn’t have a particular purpose or starting and end (email, social media, and so on).
Organize these categories on your iPhone; you don’t waste your time on unnecessary junk. One way is to leave the tools or utility apps on your home screen and hide other apps in folders.
2. Make The Control Center Your Best Friend
We’ve all gotten sucked into that trap where we unlock our iPhone to use it for a specific purpose. But then, an hour of random scrolling and useless distractions went by. This is exceptionally challenging when you grab your phone to set up an alarm for the following day and end up binge scrolling through your social media.
To end this cycle, learn to open these applications without unlocking your phone. You can do this by just swiping up to get to the Control Center. It’s quicker to open applications along these lines, and you won’t experience that enticing home screen.
3. Launch Apps using iPhone’s Consciousness Filter (i.e., Typing)
Your iPhone has a built-in typing feature where you can search apps by consciously typing instead of relying on muscle memory. While you can use muscle memory to move your thumb to open an application automatically unknowingly, it’s tough to type on a keyboard unwittingly.
At first, it will look time-consuming. But this practice will reduce your time of unconscious usage as you’ll think many times before typing something.
4. Download an App Geared Toward Mindful iPhone Use
Indeed – there’s an application for that! Look at the “Forest” application and avoid the temptation. If you have a high level of self-control, you can also resist yourself to check your phone only thrice a day.
5. Avoid Random Vibrations
Today when our phone hums, it very well may be anything: an emergency call from a relative, a colleague pinged you for some work, or somebody following you on Twitter. Our phone vibrates the same for anything and everything!
Switching off notifications will ease a portion of this. However, it would likewise assist with recognizing when actual individuals need our attention and different sorts of notices.
Fortunately, Apple, we should do precisely that with custom vibration signatures.
- Go to Settings > Notifications > Messages > Sounds > Vibration
- “Create New Vibration” to tap a custom vibration when somebody sends you a message.
- Along these lines, if your iPhone is on silent mode, you can still tell when a vibration implies that an individual sent a message.
However, if you’re using third-party applications like WhatsApp, or WeChat, Apple doesn’t allow you to set up custom vibrations for other applications.
In Conclusion
We believe the tips mentioned above will connect the dots and help you have a mindful relationship with your iPhone. We cannot leave our phones. But, we can limit our usage and design our life around our phones thoughtfully. So that everything is liveable with convenience, peace, and mindfulness.