Take 10 Minutes To Arrange The Apps On Your Phone

How many times a day do you open your phone to look at something? The answer varies from person to person, but for the majority of people, it is many, many times in a day. In fact, according to Internet Trends, the average smartphone owner unlocks their phone 150 times a day.

An often overlooked productivity enhancer is where you place the application icons on your phone. Here's how I think you should lay out your phone.

How should you arrange your app icons on your phone?

So you've got 6 pages of icons sorted in "chronological order". In other words, from the first app that you ever downloaded ever to the latest one located on the most distant screen. Half the icons you don't use anymore (looking at you, Vine).

In other words, it's time to do a tidy-up, but where to begin? At the top level, it can be easy to sort the apps into 2 or 3 categories. These might be business-related, personal apps and, maybe, kids-related. The goal is to get your apps down to one page per category. This way, as you scroll through, you know that you are on the "business page" or the "personal page".

Because your business productivity is the priority - that's the one that you earn money from - the business apps should be first. Followed by your personal apps. It doesn't matter if you have to do an extra swipe to your personal apps at night. That time is off the clock.

If you have an app you use for both business and personal, put it on the business page. Remember, your priority is that every app you need for business is available at your fingertips quickly.

Use folders to arrange your app icons

If you have too many apps for one screen (no one will blame you), you can use folders. These would group the apps by a second-level category. Categories you could arrange your icons might be:

• News
• Social Media
• Entertainment
• Health
• Shopping
• Audio
• Utilities

A folder can hold 9 icon apps but can have multiple pages. I don't tend to like multiple pages in the folders, instead opting for 2 folders with the same category name (for example, two "Social Media" folders). The benefit of this is that if a folder becomes full and I want to add a 10th icon, I create a new folder but only after considering whether there are any apps I want to delete. This means I am constantly assessing whether I need so many icons or apps on my phone.

Folders allow you to find your app quickly.

How to deal with unused but useful apps

There are apps that have a small function but don't really deserve a place on your main 2 pages. An example of this might be the Apple Watch app or the calculator app (which can be gotten easily from the Control Center). In previous iOS versions, I held an extra folder labelled "Not Used". This folder also included an app that came with my Sony Headphones that I only used once but wanted around if I wanted to reset my headphones.

In the latest versions of iOS, Apple seems to have recognised this with the ability to either entirely delete an app or just remove it from the Home Screen. Swiping to the right gets you to the App Library, where all your apps are stored, including the unused ones you never use.

Are widgets a waste of Home Screen space?

iOS 14 finally brought widgets to the home screen, allowing you to see small bits of information from particular apps. Uptake has been generally slow for the widgets, and it will be a personal decision whether you want a widget taking up valuable folder space. I don't tend to like them as a general rule. Often, I find the information they can provide is too minimal to be helpful. I have gotten to like a couple of widgets, though:

• Carrot Weather for its ability to both tell me the weather forecast and deeply disturb me at the same time
• iPhoto for its random photo choice, which can bring back some great memories

The information you need from an app—for example, your email—may be enough from a widget that you sacrifice some home screen space for the privilege. The priority for productive swiping should be to keep the number of app icon screens to 2-3 at the maximum.

How much time are you saving?

Remember that the average phone user opens their phone 150 times; a heavy user will open significantly more. Potentially 300 or more times. With no particular order to your apps, you are potentially wasting 5-10 seconds swiping and finding apps every time you open them. An average person, at best, is wasting 12 minutes every day or 76 hours in a year just looking for the app they want. A heavy user (who is likely to have more apps) could be wasting close to 300 hours (300 opens x 10 seconds x 365 days).

This is a classic example of a habit that could save just a few seconds but is repeated many times a day can lead to significant improvements in productivity. Tidying your phone can be done in 10-20 minutes. You could do it while you're watching TV tonight but it will save you hours of productivity in the years to come.

Of course, the best productivity trick might be to look at your phone less!