Defaults For My Phone
Tags: Knowledge, Intentional Living, Productivity, Apps, Habits

I’ve stopped using the cesspit that is Facebook years ago (I still throw up a bit in my mouth when I realise I used to use it) and I never really got hooked to the HDR filtered cesspit that is Instagram. I don’t have these on my phone and I can’t remember the last time I logged into these and boy have I ben better off. And why wouldn’t I be?

But Twitter, though. It’s a real one if you ask me. It hardly ever shows me the filtered realities of vague acquaintances — it’s just a tool for me to keep up with the world and the stuff that I like. So it’s nice that way.

However, I recently realized that it’s been taking up quite a bit of my time. It became second nature for me to open Twitter and keep on tugging the page to refresh. A lot of time times I wasn’t even reading anything, I was just scrolling and other times I wasn’t looking at things I wanted to look at in that moment, I was just looking at things that were just there.

So I decided to become more conscious with what I do on my phone when I have tiny pockets of time, times when I would have mindlessly scrolled on my phone.

Twitter

I did not give up using Twitter. I could never. It’s how I know what’s happening. However, I did make changes to how I use Twitter.

First of all, I got even more strict with my bi-yearly spring cleanings — Around twice a year, I go through my following list and unfollow accounts that are no longer relevant to my interests and accounts that have become more annoying over time. I just decided to set the standards pretty high for making the cut.

I started using lists more religiously. Lists have been around for as long as Twitter has and I’ve sparingly used them in the past. But now I almost exclusively use Twitter through lists. I have a few lists for my core interests on Twitter — political discourse/memes, journalists, climate, activists, journalists & scientists, music magazines, pro-wrestling, football/Chelsea FC, mainstream news media and satire/jokes/shitpostings/more memes. I populated these lists with relevant accounts that I like. So now when I use Twitter, I can just go and read the tweets about something I am in the mood of, rather than hoping to find them in the commotion of the timeline. Also, it really helps that Twitter recently made UI changes to their mobile app to make using lists easier. I can now just swipe through my lists, it’s pretty cool.

I started using this app which is a curated platform for articles from around the web. What makes it great is that it reduces the articles to a few bite-sized, easy to digest cards, perfect for attention spans that are being stretched thin exponentially. If I like what these cards show, I can choose to read the entire original article or save it to read later.

In an attempt to have more than surface knowledge about things that are of interest to me, I like to read articles, but I dislike looking for them. I don’t want to be out looking for them on the internet and I don’t want to be on apps that aggregate articles about a whole bunch of stuff in a bottomless feed. That’s why Refind is cool — I just set my interests and followed publications I like and set the number of articles I want to see in a day. So now everyday it gives me 20 articles from across the web about things I want to know more about. And the more I use it and give it feedback, the better it’s algorithms become.

Reading

My read-it-later list (recently ditched pocket for my own database on Notion) gets quite long. So I make sure I stay on top of it. Whenever I find some time, I go through my list and find something I am in the mood for.

If not that, I just read my books. One of the many, many, many reasons why I prefer ebooks over stone-age physical books is that it’s always in my pocket. I don’t have to remember to bring it with me to places. So whenever I can I try to squeeze in reading a few pages.

And while we’re talking about apps and platforms and books, I have to give a shoutout to The Storygraph. It has a nice and clean UI, it’s not cluttered, it’s not unresponsive. What’s more is that it has tags such as slow-paced, light-hearted, tense etc for books along with genres. So finding what to read based on the mood is pretty easy. It has nice little pie charts that show reading habits and has a great recommendation engine. And it’s not owned by Amazon. It’s everything Goodreads is not. Hallelujah, there’s finally an alternative to Goodreads!