re-arrangement
Jun 23rd, 2016 by Ashley
So I’ve started listening to Cortex (after Daniel started to re-listen to it and Hello Internet), because now I do want to manage my monkey better and through that, live a better life. The first few episodes inspired me to rearrange my iPhone icons. It was long overdue. I was periodically organizing it to make sure it has some sort of logic, and when I downloaded a new app, I’d try to put it in a logical place. However, after a few strikes of laziness, it got out of hand and I stopped trying.
And this is what happened: (Grey might have an heart attack. Daniel almost did.)
I don’t even know when and why Pinterest, an app that I barely use, ended up on the first page. That is probably why I could never, really NEVER, find it. It has no place on the first page! (It still took me more than 10 seconds to find it on the above image as I write this.)
I started to reorganize it and try using folders. I used to hate the ideas of folders on iPhone. The only 2 folders I had, which were on the very last page, are games, which I’m trying not to play, hence hidden, and Apple stuff that I cannot remove. I didn’t start out with a clear rule of arrangement and no specific/tangible end goal, except for making it look nicer and make my workflow more efficient. Daniel disapproves. Therefore, now I’m trying to think about it more.
It is indeed very difficult.
Currently, I define my pages as: constantly used, frequently used, and rarely used but because I don’t remember their names so I don’t want to uninstall them and not being able to reinstall them when I need them. Because of these three categories, I have three pages instead of two even though I can really fit everything into two. Putting the Obsessions (Facebook, PTT, Plurk, VK, reddit, twitter) into a folder is me trying to break the established neuro-pathway where my finger autonomously taps on them whenever I find myself with one minute or two (sometimes even less) of “spare time”. I didn’t really obsess over vk, reddit or twitter, but having a folder with only 3 apps is an abomination to me, so I brought them in.
Now I don’t know what else to do.
The central idea of Grey’s home screen arrangement principle that Daniel is advocating for is easy access for important apps and search for the rest (which neatly reside in a folder). I couldn’t get behind the idea initially because, to be honest, I never used the search function and the thought of training myself to adopt a new behavior is unthinkable. But I think the argument is legitimate — anything that is not on the first page usually cannot be instinctively and instantly located, and therefore, instead of wasting brain juice (albeit a few seconds), one should just search for it when needed. I figured out how I can get to the search bar (while talking to Daniel to exhibit how I really don’t ever use that function) and I’m getting used the idea of searching. Now my phone looks like this. We’ll see how it goes.