My first weekend project was replacing the charging cable on my golf cart. Items needed: wire cutters, screwdrivers, ½ wrench, black electrical tape and my ratchet set. It took me 15 minutes of digging in the pile to find everything I needed. I thought about the mechanic who has everything in place on a peg board and tool cabinet – he would have a 15-minute head start on my unorganized life, and the job only took 15 minutes!
So where am I going with this? Pull out your smartphone, open it up and look at your apps. Are they neatly in order like a mechanics, or are they in a pile like my tools? This really makes a difference in productivity and is so easy to correct. You have two options and they are both right; choose whichever one you feel works best for you.
Option One – Decide which apps you use the most and move them to the first page of apps. I personally think page one should be all productivity and apps needed to support your career, but it’s your phone. Either way, start organizing the apps so you can quickly find what you are looking for, with your most frequently used apps where you can find them quickly.
Option Two – Build folders by category. For example, put all social media apps into a folder, create another folder for news apps, maybe a shopping folder, and I use a travel folder with all my hotel, airlines, rental cars, Uber etc. in one folder.
I have over 150 apps on my phone which is 7 pages of apps. Recently we had a new garage door installed and of course it’s Wi-Fi enabled. When I downloaded the app it went to page 7 of apps. The first time I used it I had to scan 7 pages of apps looking for my garage door app. Yes, I moved it to page two!
While we are talking apps and using your smartphone smartly, let’s discuss the battery. There are so many myths out there about batteries and charging – let’s clear a few up:
Is it hard on your smartphone battery to charge overnight every night? Answer: NO, today’s technology and batteries are just fine charging overnight.
Should I discharge my battery until it’s under 50% before charging? Answer: NO, again it’s not hard on the battery plus it’s better to have a fully charged battery available.
Does completely draining your smartphone battery hurt battery life? Answer: YES, smartphone batteries come with a chip to prevent total discharge. This still is not good as deep drains can shorten battery life.