The smartphone is probably the object that has the most influence on our lives these days. From the choice of apps we use to the type of notifications, from email to calendars, these little bricks of glass, metal, and plastic drive our habits.
This is why I decided that heading into this new experience of 12 weeks without work, I would have to make some changes. I present you my usual iPhone home screen on the left, and the new one I set up yesterday on the right:
Some apps disappeared completely, some have been placed in folders while others replaced them. This is, of course, an iterative process, it took a very long time to get to the screen on the left, which has been the object of a flash-talk I gave at the Automattic Grand Meetup last year, and probably should become a blog post.
I expect the content of my sabbatical home screen to evolve also, but for now here are the main differences:
- The bottom section is oriented towards content consumption, content creation, and communication when it was previously heavily weighted towards productivity.
- Email and Slack have disappeared: these are by far the most distracting ones during a leave.
- While communication tools are present in both screens, the new one is radically oriented towards leisure. It’s actually interesting to realise that many of the people I want to be in touch with during my leave are people I actually work with, but we separate professional and private interactions across different apps.
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