Let’s make our phones tools again

Nowadays many people are realizing the detrimental effect their smartphone has on their ability to focus. I won’t go into the details of these negative effects as they have been written about ad nauseam but I will present a couple of small adjustments you can make to your phone right now that could help you, and have helped me, to make your phone a tool again instead of an entertainment center.

1. Set your color space to monochrome

Easiest one of them all, find yourself mindlessly scrolling trough your Facebook feed, Instagram? Hooked by flashy notifications? Not anymore. Welcome to your new home screen where nothing is special and everything is boring. This has been the single most useful tip I have ever got for boosting my productivity, this one simple solution takes the addictiveness out of every social media platform. Facebook is using red dots to lure in it’s users into useless notifications? Not you!

There are two ways to go about this:

1. Enable developer options, go to developer options ->Simulate color space and set it to monochrome
2. If you want to be able to switch quickly between the modes download Greyscale, you’ll need to have root or ADB for this but then it will be available as toggle in the quick settings menu, very convenient.

Before & after, I know boring, but not boring enough!

2. Set your wallpaper to black

This does not only look cleaner but if you have some sort of OLED display you are actually saving quite some power with this too. It does not get much more functional than this.

Tip: Need a wall paper, simply search for black

Before & after, some minimalist icons and this could be considered modern!

3. Hide notifications on your lock screen

While you should probably just block the notifications of the apps that are hijacking your attention limiting them to your status bar helps a lot, no more getting reeled in by notifications though a subconscious phone check.

That’s it!

Congratulations, you hopefully transformed your phone into something that is actually useful and given that you have the right display it will actually save some battery too, here are some bonus points if you want more:

• Remove all apps that can get you into an unproductive workflow from your home screen (Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Instagram)
• Put your phone on silent, permanently
• Put your phone into flight mode at 10 p.m. and out of it at 10 a.m.
• Put your phone into the pocket of your coat (or another pocket with a zipper)