[Dimensional Spring Cleaning] Let's Review Our Smartphones

Spring cleaning the house is great, but the things we can't see need a deep clean even more.

Hello! I'm Rakutano, whose motto is "Easy and Fun"!!

Will you all be doing some spring cleaning for the New Year?

In my house, we clean the windows and the window tracks.

Before that kind of cleaning, my smartphone and how I use my time were so messy and disorganized that this time I'm going to write about how I reviewed them.

Your smartphone screen is a reflection of your own movements

My smartphone home screen is already organized!!
I meant to keep a picture of my messy home screen, but I forgot (lol).

When you use your smartphone aimlessly every day, you end up installing apps casually and arranging them without much thought.

Just like emails pile up if you aren't conscious of them, apps pile up too.

The problem here is that because you arrange them aimlessly, you end up wasting time searching for them!

I think you can open apps you're used to right away, but that's also a problem! Have you ever been conscious of how many times you swipe when searching for something?

・Time spent searching
・Number of swipes

It's difficult to measure these with precise timing.

For example, I had the note app placed on the second page.

That meant I was repeating the process of swiping right and tapping every single time.

"Once I open it, I can just launch it from my history, so it's not a problem."

I used to think this, but on Android, you have to tap the bottom right of the home screen to open your history.

Even here, one extra tap becomes necessary.

I open the note app more than three times a day.

I perform one right swipe and about two history taps.

This is just for one app; in reality, I tap and swipe through many more apps.

It takes less than a second to do, but try swiping 1,000 times on your own device.

That is the amount of time lost over the course of a year.

With that in mind, when you look at the screen from earlier,

I make sure that the apps I use every day are placed on the home screen so they always open with a single tap.I have set it up this way.

Furthermore, since people have a habit of reading from the top left, I have arranged the important apps that I want to check every day in order starting from the top left.

This way, I never forget to check them!! (Apps that require a reply are given priority, in particular)

Also, apps that make you want to play, like social games, are put into folders. (Project Sekai and Azur Lane are visible...)

By doing this, they become harder to see from the home screen, and the number of taps required increases, making them harder to touch.

First, start with the apps that you absolutely need to check,

and then it is best if you can naturally transition to playing!!

This is important, but I recommend having only one home screen.

The reason is that the number of swipes increases, and it is easy to place extra apps on an extra page.

The trick to keeping things minimal is to reduce your storage space.
If there is no space to put things in the first place, you cannot put them there even if you buy them,

and for smartphones, if there is no space to put apps, it is harder to install them.

If the space to put things decreases, you will only keep the necessary apps, so for that reason as well, having only one home screen is good.

Fine details

Subconscious

Before, I used to have things like beautiful girls on my home screen.

It's the kind of thing where if someone sees it on the train, they'll know, 'Oh, this guy is an otaku.'

However, I've been keeping all my screens simple for about three years now.

By doing that, I've stopped checking Twitter so frequently.

You might wonder, why does seeing a beautiful girl on the home screen make me want to check Twitter?

The reason is that it's pulling a trigger in your subconscious mind that you aren't even aware of.

Subconsciously, it's like, 'Oh, a beautiful girl! I want to see more beautiful girls! Let's check Twitter!' But in reality, I'm not thinking that at all.

Because it's a smartphone you touch every day, your awareness of it fades, but it actually has a huge influence on you, so it might be a good idea to consciously re-evaluate it once.