This is just a quick post I wanted to share. I often find myself picking up my phone throughout the day, or getting distracted while I should be doing deep focused work.

I think the smartphone is probably one of the worst inventions for our global attention span. It’s a super powerful and useful tool, but if you use it without intentionality it can destroy your ability to focus for long periods of time.

My minimal phone setup for focus

I removed all social media from my phone, and only keep the essentials on my homescreen, a few useful apps, and things that aren’t distracting (a.k.a. useful tools only).

Delete apps you don’t use, clean up and organize your phone’s layout, and use a bit of discipline to not re-download and start scrolling again, and you’ll quickly notice your ability to focus, along with your desire to be creative comes back quickly! Having addicting, high dopamine, infinite scrolling feeds in our pockets 24/7 really does add a lot of mental burden and strain that we don’t consciously notice until we delete the source of the distraction.

P.S. this is the first post using the new system I added to my blog that I am calling “quick bytes” - a way for me to post short blog posts and have the entire post visible on the writing page, kind of like a social media timeline. I still plan on writing long-form as well when I have a topic worth covering in depth.