Ever since I read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism a few years ago I have been attempting to be mindful of how I use my phone. I’ve limited things like notifications, which accounts I follow on Twitter and Instagram, but sometimes I was finding myself overly distracted by the different apps on my phone. Need to quickly check my emails? Oh lets just click on instagram and have a quick look at things… Suddenly 15 minutes have gone and I can’t remember what I was supposed to be doing.
Sometimes it’s not so much curating my content that’s the issue but rather not looking at it in the first place. This is where Apple’s new Focus Mode on iOS15 really steps in and helps me manage my phone usage.
What Is Focus Mode?
Focus Mode is Apple’s much enhanced and improved Do Not Disturb functionality, where you can create different profiles depending on what you’re doing. In each of these profiles you can set which apps and people can send you notifications immediately, which get added to summary or can’t send you notifications at all. Alongside this you can customise your home screen to look different depending on which mode you have enabled.
Focus Modes can be configured by going to Settings > Focus Mode.
How I Use Focus Mode
I’ve set up my default home screen with a few specific principles:
- Top half of the screen are widgets where I can see key information
- Bottom half of the screen is reserved for apps as they’re easiest to reach
- Any apps not on the home screen are in the App Library
- If I need to access an app not on the home screen, I swipe down and search for it
With that in mind, this is what my home screen looks like:
I’ve kept the same principles when it comes to focus modes. Lets take a look at my Work Focus Mode
Work/Life Balance
My Work Focus Mode is configured to automatically turn on at 10:00 and turn off at 16:00 during weekdays. It’s a helpful shove to get in the zone for getting work done.
The Calendar widget has been replaced with the Outlook Calendar which displays any work meetings or events coming up.
My Hey Email and Activity widgets remain as I like to check in on them during the day. I have set up a smart widget so I can scroll on the Hey Email to see my phone usage in the day if I want to, but I tend not to check that very often.
The key apps I need to access are Maps for when I’m travelling for work, alongside Teams. I’ve added Safari and Instapaper so that I go there to read something rather than end up doomscrolling on Instagram or Twitter.
All notifications are muted except a handful of work related apps, and any messages from my girlfriend.
What’s great about having a dedicated mode for work is that it’s allowed me to remove my work apps from my default home screen. Previously having them on my home screen tempted me to check them in the evening or weekends when I really didn’t need to.
Sleep Mode
My sleep mode turns on automatically with my scheduled Wind Down, which is 21:45, and turns off at 07:00 when my alarm goes off.
As you can see here my Sleep mode has replaced all apps with Widgets on the home screen. My intention here is to really make my phone as distraction-free as possible.
- Headspace and Audible are there to help me sleep.
- AutoSleep reminds me when I should be going to bed and Sleep reminds me when my Alarm is set.
- Finally I have Daylio which I use to reflect on my day.
Now obviously I can swipe right on my home screen and end up in the App Library and I can access anything in there. There’s really very little stopping me from going to the App Library and finding Instagram, Twitter or Reddit and wasting time. However by removing them from the home screen and having to go look for the app, it adds just enough friction to put me off doing so.
Configuring Focus Mode
Configuring Focus Mode is super easy and straightforward. All you need to do is go to Settings > Focus Modes and customise the pre-existing ones or set up a new one.
Sadly the same can’t be said for configuring the home screens for different modes, which I found much more frustrating and annoying than it should be.
The way I configured my home screens was by holding my finger down on the screen where the dots are, swiping right and creating another screen.
Then once I had created that screen I would hide that screen by tapping the dots and unticking it. I repeated this process for each focus mode screen I needed.
This feels clunky and unintuitive. Apple could easily add a ‘Home Screen customisation’ view in the Focus Mode configuration that would really help you build your home screen. However I imagine if a lot of users like to have all their apps listed on separate pages rather than utilise the App Library that maybe this could get clunky and messy. I’m hoping in a future update — I guess iOS16 — they make this a bit easier to do.
Conclusion
Overall I’ve found iOS15’s Focus Modes to be really helpful and valuable in helping me be more intentional about how I use my phone. By scheduling my work and sleep focus modes it helps me stay focused on what I need to do, and if I am tempted to check Instagram or Twitter, the friction I’ve added to my process keeps me checking them out most of the time.
Hopefully you find this helpful and gives you some food for thought for configuring your own Focus Modes.
