Keeping the Peace with Technology
Technology is an integral part of our daily lives, and for some of us, it can create some unnecessary stress. Part of our goal here is to reduce stress by bringing you tips and tricks for being the boss of your stuff, and that includes your technology, so let’s get into it!
For most of us, our phones are the piece of technology that is most intimately involved in our daily lives. We carry it around in our pockets or in our hands, we check it regularly, and it’s how we communicate with almost everyone in our lives. Because our phones are so important to us, they can sometimes unknowingly be adding stress to our days. I’d like to bring to our awareness some of these subconscious stress creators and offer potential solutions for minimizing that stress.
Text Messages
One of the biggest stressors when it comes to text messaging is accidentally not responding, or as the kids say, “leaving someone on read.” We’ve all done it. You receive a text at an inconvenient time, you read it, and then you intend to respond when you have time but you forget. No one wants to be the person who doesn’t respond to messages, but some of us have a harder time managing that constant input/output. Here are some ideas you could start implementing today that might help you if this is something you really struggle with:
Put your phone on Do Not Disturb or Work mode when you know you’re too busy to respond to non-urgent messages. You can customize these on your phone to your preferences, and even allow certain contacts to override the Do Not Disturb settings. So if you want to make sure a text from your mom, partner, or child will always get to you, you can!
Marking messages as “unread.” It used to be that once you read a text message, you couldn’t do anything about the fact that the message would go into your “soup” of read text messages, but for years now, we’ve had the ability to mark a message as unread to indicate to our brains that we need to go back to it. This tool is really helpful for those of us who like to keep a clean inbox with no notifications. For me, that little red number indicating a message lets me know I have unfinished business in the messaging app, and it prevents me from overlooking a text I’ve already read.
Photos
If the photo album on your phone is bringing you stress, I’d like you to look at this how we often look at a place in our home that needs some organization. We always start an organization project with an edit. It will take some work at first, but if you start scrolling through your photo album and deleting pictures, you’ll be shocked at how many you didn’t realize you had kept that you don’t need. Once you’ve done your initial purge of unwanted pictures, you can easily maintain a more manageable album by regularly scrolling back and deleting things. I do this a couple of times per week and I’ll delete things like screenshots, duplicates, and photos I’ve taken for work that I no longer need. It’s likely you’ve taken pictures for a particular purpose like selling an item online and you’ve forgotten to get those pictures out of your camera roll.
When organizing a space, the next step after the edit is to categorize things and put them with their friends. If you have images you need to hold onto for work, create a work album. If you have images of your kids that you intend to text your parents, create a shared album with them and put those pictures in there regularly so they have access to them too. Albums are like little containers for our photos. They keep things in categories and help us know how to find them when we need them
Boundaries
Maybe the thing that stresses you out the most about your phone is how reliant you are. I think many of us would admit to being mildly addicted to our phones. If you’re having a hard time with this, now is a good time to set some boundaries, and maybe these boundaries could extend to anyone in your household with a phone so that everyone is on the same page. Here are some ideas for phone boundaries:
Phones charge somewhere overnight that isn’t in your bedroom
Phones get turned to silent and placed in a basket at home during certain hours of the day
Phones get set to Do Not Disturb a couple of hours before bedtime to help you have a more peaceful evening
Phones get set to grayscale at a particular time to make scrolling less enticing
Take your most addictive apps off your home screen making them slightly more challenging to access
Too Many Apps
Speaking of apps, excess always creates opportunities for stress. Just like with our photos, our app count can get a little out of control sometimes, cluttering up our phones. Again, start with an edit. The great thing about deleting a free app is that you can always download it again if you find that you need it. Weed through your phone and delete any apps that you no longer need or that you feel are bringing unnecessary stress to your life. You already know the next step - categorize! Folders are your best friend here. Create a system that makes sense for you, and that will likely be different than a system that makes sense for someone else. For example, I have a friend who is incredibly visual and she has her apps organized by the color of the icon (Facebook goes in the blue folder, iMessage in the green, and so on and so on). This system would never work for me, but it works for her! I keep my apps categorized by how I use them. I have a folder for apps that are strictly used for work, a folder for shopping apps, a folder for apps I use when I travel, and a folder for apps I only use in NYC. Figure out what system for organization makes the most sense for you!
If this all feels a little overwhelming, I have good news. Tara has created an excellent resource for iPhone Peace Hacks, and it will be going out in this month’s email newsletters. If you want access to this resource and you don’t already subscribe to the House Peace newsletter, now is a great time to sign up so you don’t miss out!
We’ve also curated a list of some of our favorite tech items on our Amazon Storefront, so head over there if you’re curious about what tech items we’re loving.
I hope these tips help bring a little more peace to your relationship with your phone, and as always, we’re here to help. If you have questions about anything you’ve read here, feel free to reach out on Instagram. We’re here for you!
— Colleen
PS. You can get to know me and my family a little more here!
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