Mobile Workflow Must Improve Your Life
Stick with a pragmatic approach to device usage
Let’s face it. Mobile devices and cell phones are a tool that over 90% of humans 13 years or older use every day. That’s over six billion people. Smartphones, while considerably less prevalent in global adoption, have afforded increasingly innovative and mobile ways of accessing something called the Cloud ☁️. The global inequities? That’s for another post. The opportunities for an improved first world human condition? Please read on.
Are we better off with this tech, telco innovation?
There’s a pause, perhaps, where your answer and mine is ‘Yes, But’!
Consider the buttressed iOS Home screenshot. What do you notice? What do you NOT notice? What do you glean regarding behavior and style? Okay, since this is my phone’s home screen, I’ll help. I am an iPhone user who is on his third hardware version, with an upgrade about every two and a half years. You notice Verizon as my provider and that I tend to sort apps by theme or function, and that I have a few unread emails. What else?
iOS Home.
I have an upper elementary kid on sports teams who, thankfully, use TeamSnap to communicate and organize. This Boulder-based 2009 startup has been immensely helpful to me, my family, and respective teams. Buttressed up to that and depending on the season, I watch weather in real-time and subscribe to MyRadar Pro; so far it’s been worth the monthly nut. I use MyFitnessPal by UnderArmour; yes, I buy local via UA app where choices and logistics are easy. I have Home screen access to my preferred writing platform, Medium, because writing inspiration arrives at inopportune times and one must be ready. Finally, there’s a qualitative window into my son’s academic progress via Seesaw. Then there’s a dozen functional buckets that Apple calls folders. I will address a few.
Social.
I spend a fair amount of time here, because, well, social media takes time. The time-on-task sequence goes Twitter > LinkedIn > Facebook, with a heavy tilt to Twitter usage; for me, Twitter is 80% professional, LinkedIn 95% professional, and Facebook, a confusing mashup of professional and personal with an increasingly focused bent to the former. I use Flipboard to curate social media and Nuzzel to algorithmically search and manually curate content into a weekly newsletter. Quora and other niche sites sit in the background but avail information and thought leadership from and for a specific segment of users. Hootsuite? This app helps me bundle posts into batches for timed release across the work week. Rhetorically, I am not so fond of the tail wagging the dog when it comes to social media.
Health.
In my early fifties and tilting to mid-decade, married with three children and too much on the plate, I have neglected the physical side of mind-body-spirit for too long. This is a modest statement considering I used to be an athlete. Sigh. 😔
Approximately six months ago, I began to consider nutritional intake and physical exertion more seriously. I use an Apple watch to track steps, heart beat, calories burned and the like. This data ties into either the UA Record or MyFitness Pal apps, which have a bundled effect. I step on a UA scale twice each day. There, I can wirelessly extract weight and % blubber takeaways. Thankfully, things are improving. There’s also Lumosity and Headspace for the mind and soul, respectively. I will need to get back to you on these, but, from early testing, there’s upside.
Productive.
Here is where I gain speed and — wait for it — productivity. My workflow on the professional front is driven by the Microsoft Office 365 stack: OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint, and the like. Interestingly, usage for me and my TU Venture Creation team is sequenced from the tactical notekeeping (OneNote), to the collaborative document layer (OneDrive), to the largely finished, oft-archived, and always secure document repository (SharePoint). At home, I allow Alexa, DropBox, DocuSign, and Google to guide much of my personal workflow. The Amazon influence is new but interesting with a household of five. DropBox houses personal documents and automatically backed up photos from iOS devices. DocuSign is self explanatory and has done away with the need for a fax machine. Google links my family, on email, calendar, and documentation. We should probably have a Google Home device versus Amazon Alexa but one should try to spread the ‘love’ when one is the product.
The final folder worth highlighting among the twelve I currently have enabled is the ‘Listen’ folder. You see, music or white noise or podcasts or the audio portion of video is something that you can do almost anywhere except when attending otherwise. My family has a bundled deal with Spotify where we share lists a bit, and I’ve been downloading music via iTunes for over a decade. Some content is free such as that on YouTube, where like SoundCloud is a place to display recorded video and audio, respectively. One hitch with SoundCloud is that I use Spreaker to actually record the MP3, upload it into SoundCloud, customize therein and embed in Medium to summarize blog posts. We’ll call it a workflow end around.
What you might have noticed as missing from my Home screen is the green Apple Phone app. If you are semi-observant, you noticed it in the image above inside the ‘Productive’ folder. The reality is, my communication relies less and less on synchronous or telephonic communication. The takeaway here from this post? Mobile workflow is personal and personalized, driven by human need and human error. But it’s not about the technology. It’s about the enabled service. And if you are not enabled to be more productive, you should go back to a flip phone. Never spend more than 15 continuous minutes staring at a mobile screen. Never do more than glance at your device in a work meeting or family dinner. Always look someone in the eye when they enter a room. Be present, prepared, and pragmatic. I’m working on it.
Oh, and, as Emily Post posits here, —
Be in control of your [device], don’t let it control you!
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this article, please hit the 👏 button so other prospective readers can see it, too.
I am a contrarian educator working via Bonsal Capital to induce equitable impact, effectiveness, and economic upside.
