April 19, 2016

Cutting back on empty content apps

I’ve decided my next experiment: delete all Apps that are full of empty calories content.

Two unrelated items1 made me realize I need to take extreme measures to waste less time on garbage:

1. Dumbphone by Marc Jenkins:

Since I can’t rely on my own willpower, I’ve removed all of the Apps on my phone that don’t provide significant value. I’ve removed all temptation. And this morning, it worked.

Love his paired down home-screen. It basically forces you to Learn, Create, Do, or turn off the iPhone move on with your life.

2. Wasted Hours by Matt Lubchansky:

Wasted HoursWasted Hours

This struck a nerve. It made me laugh, but also a bit more uncomfortable that I would like to admit.

The usual suspects

Gone are: Tweetbot, Reeder, Narwhal, Product Hunt, Hacker News, Instagram, Nuzzel, Pinner, Morning News, FB Messenger, Youtube and even Linky. This is going to hurt a lot.

I even deleted Google Inbox. Going to force myself to use Gmail or even Apple Mail. Why? because all the Apps mentioned lead me to waste time and think I’m doing something. Scheduling an email for later is not much better than streaming endlessly remixed crap, just to find the occasional gold nugget.

I’m not going offline, just taking the first step and taking these time voids from the iPhone. I’ll try to get my RSS, Tweetbot, etc fix on the iPad mini.

Dammit… it just occurred to me that I need to delete them all from the MacBook also.


  1. Which ironically I found via my RSS reader, but that is neither here nor there.↩︎


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