4 Things To Help Make Your Phone Serve You

The smartphone was made for man, not man for the smartphone.
— Not Jesus

These supercomputers in our pocket are absolutely incredible. Solomon would have traded all his treasure to have this much knowledge at his fingertips for a day.

They can also suck your life. Look around at a restaurant, on the bus or train, everyone around you is pulled into another universe, not present to the actual world surrounding them.

I can’t help you with screen addiction, but I do have a few tips for keeping your phone on the proper end of the leash.

Turn Off Notifications

I have 8 Gmail accounts connected to my phone. How many of those emails ping me? None. Batch your emails!

What about my 9 Slack teams? Zero notifications.

Hundreds of Telegrams conversations, bots, and groups? Ok, so I do have a few notifications, but they are customized and intelligent. More on that later.

The first step to controlling your phone is determining, at the outset, who’s telling who what to do.

Don’t Answer Your Phone

This falls in the “turn off notifications” category, but deserves to be recognized on its own.

99% of calls to my phone are spam and scams in the first place. Other than that, it’s just incredibly inefficient.

I think phone calls are the rudest form of communication today.

When you call someone, you are assuming that at that exact moment they have nothing else going on, or they’ll stop whatever they’re doing to stick a phone on their face for an indefinite amount of time. Phone calls almost always require some degree of phone tag. If I absolutely must participate in a phone call, I treat it as a meeting (which I also avoid) set a purpose and length, and schedule it.

I can get most everything done more clearly with an email. A text message is ideal for any short confirmation. My wife and I use Telegram voice messages all day long. One key advantage to messaging is they allow you to send when you are able, and for the receiver to address when able, and to reference at any time.

There was a time when phone calls were magic, accelerated business, connected people across the globe. That was a while ago. We have the internet and computers now.

Swipe

This is a short, simple one. I’ve never had an iPhone, and got started late in 2013 with my first Nexus. So, I’ve been swiping since day one.

It pains me to see people pecking at a tiny keyboard on their phone. You might as well have a blackberry.

I’m pretty sure I can swipe faster (and way more legibly) than handwriting. Because it is the familiar old QWERTY board, I’m also able to basically swipe without keeping my eyes on the keys.

If you are on Android and still not swiping, get with it.

If you iPhone, Apple has surprisingly made Gboard available for some time now. Step up.

Get a Better Messaging App

SMS’ing is pretty outdated and slow. The multitude of carriers and devices still supported by texting severely limits its abilities.

That’s fine, use Telegram!

I’ve already mentioned custom notifications and voice messages. Additionally, there are video messages, channels, groups, and bots, oh the bots. Users can edit, forward, reply, and even delete messages sent to another user. Telegram is open source, and you can make your own bots. It’s private, secure, and does not share your data — which is refreshing in 2019, but also just means messages are sent and received much faster when they’re not being crawled for data.

I’m going to end this section, as I am planning on writing a comprehensive post about Telegram Messenger.

These are just a few things I do to take control of my phone. I still struggle when it comes to scrolling that tiny screen habitually. If you are addicted to Twitter or Instagram, you should consider removing those apps from your phone. I’d love to hear any other suggestions, please include them in the comments!