I got an iPhone for the first time a couple of months back after my Android phone smashed.
It was the first piece of Apple technology that I owned, so there was a learning curve whilst setting it up, but at this point, I think that I’ve done enough to make sure that it’s an asset to my productivity rather than a distraction.
In this piece, I’m going to share how I’ve set up this phone, from apps to settings, in order to maximise the benefit that I’m getting out of it.
Let’s get started…
Apps
For the longest time, I’ve been a consumer — someone who flicks between using different apps for the sake of things.
This didn’t make things easy when it came to setting up my new iPhone.
I tried out many of the different offerings that iOS has but eventually, I settled on many of the same apps that I’d been using on my Android and Windows devices. The phone’s main role in my system is to act as a place where I can consume and capture information. Bearing that in mind, here are the apps that I use on my iPhone…
Todoist — this is one of the apps that I’ve been using on and off ever since I knew task management was a thing. It’s been a staple in my productivity stack for a few months now, primarily because of its quick capture features, which are the best in the game across devices, as well as the fact that I can organise everything in my life within the free offering of the platform.
Kindle — this is how I read the books that I’ve purchased from Amazon. I don’t have more than 25 titles in there, but it’s still a useful app to have on my phone, seeing as I don’t own a Kindle device yet.
Readwise Reader — this is how I consume all the other content (except podcasts) that I come across, from Twitter threads to articles and YouTube videos. Available on the web as well as on iOS, this is the best read-it-later app by a mile. Everything from here as well as on the Kindle that I highlight gets synced to Readwise so that I can manage the content from there.
Snipd — this is the best app for listening to podcasts. It allows you to ‘snip’ out short sections of the episode and then transcribes these snips for you to read at your leisure. You can also export your snips to Readwise, to organise all your highlights in a central location.
Raindrop.io — this has been my bookmark manager of choice for a long time now. If the link is not content to consume, it goes into Raindrop. This app just gets out of the way, storing links for when I need them. It’s rather turned into a glorified wishlist of items that I might buy at some point in my life.
All the other apps on my iPhone are to do with other things in my life. I don’t use social media — I have WhatsApp for messaging and I use YouTube on my computer. There are banking apps and password managers and other things, but they don’t tie in that heavily with my productivity.
Oh yeah, and I use Gmail for emails. That’s about it. I keep things simple.
Settings
It should be clear that iPhone doesn’t come prepared with the best default settings for productivity.
I had to do some cleaning up in this respect so that I didn’t get distracted by all the shiny icons on the screen. In my dock I now have Kindle, Readwise Reader, WhatsApp and Todoist, and the only other thing on my home screen is a couple of rows of Siri-suggested apps. They often show the option that I want to select, and because there aren’t any distracting apps on my phone, I allow it to suggest whatever, without the risk of my focus getting broken.
I uninstalled many stock apps that came with the phone, like News, Stocks, Notes and Reminders. I have no need to use them, so I don’t want them cluttering up my workspace.
The only widget I have on my home screen is a screen time page when I swipe right to show the left-hand page of my home. It keeps me grounded on how much I’m living through my screen in comparison to real life.
In terms of other settings I change, I have do not disturb switched on the vast majority of the time, as well as having completely disabled notifications for apps that I don’t want to have popping up all the time.
On my lock screen, I have one shortcut which gives me quick access to quickly enter a Todoist task, which is the most important function of my phone.
I’ve been experimenting with a greyscale screen too, and one thing’s for sure, it makes the rest of the world seem a whole lot more colourful.
These are the settings and apps that I have on my iPhone for productivity — as I said the main function is consumption and capture, so I’m geared towards being able to do this well. The phone gets out of my way for the rest of the day.
I hope that you’ve learned something new from this piece, and as always, thanks for reading!