Crippling Your Technology, Part 1


Sometimes it feels like I blog only when I can’t sleep. Maybe that’s why these posts lack content.

Matt Might writes about crippling your technology to boost your productivity.

The number one way, to quote the Recurse Center Manual: Avoid distractions.

iOS has a feature that can be co-opted to help you do that. It’s called Guided Access. You can use it to restrict yourself to a certain app. This forces you to avoid multitasking, which doesn’t seem to work well anyway.

I use it:

  • whenever I’m reading,
  • writing (in GoodNotes)
  • practicing Chinese
  • sleeping (I restrict access to my alarm app, to prevent impulsive late-night phone use)

If you’re brave, have a friend set the passcode. Then you have to prove you did something productive for them to deactivate it.

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