{"id":18477,"date":"2017-04-06T09:14:49","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T08:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/?p=18477"},"modified":"2017-04-06T13:31:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T12:31:18","slug":"from-screenspace-to-headspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/2017\/04\/06\/from-screenspace-to-headspace\/","title":{"rendered":"From screenspace to headspace"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHave you heard a word that I\u2019ve said? It\u2019s like your body is here, but you\u2019re not.\u201d Mike had been caught bang to rights with his mind elsewhere on date night at his favourite restaurant. Fortunately, the lady eyeballing him over the bread rolls was his wife so, luckily\u00a0for him, the evening didn\u2019t end with an awkward hug, an \u201cI\u2019ll give you a call sometime\u201d, and a dash for the night bus.<\/p>\n The tricky moment was described by Mike Williams – former CEO of The David Allen Company (the company who created the GTD methodology) – in a talk that highlighted the distracting qualities of the smartphone. In it, he proposed an unusual solution but one that may feel a little familiar if you\u2019re a GTD practitioner since it builds on the strategies that GTD suggests for our PCs, our desks, and our minds; and simply applies them to the smartphone, too.<\/p>\n One of his key suggestions is: \u201cHave as many alerts as you need but as few as you can get away with.\u201d <\/em>As I watched this I thought, \u2018OK, so far so good\u2019. I\u2019d switched off mail alerts a few years ago and even put the mail apps into a folder to make it one click harder to over-check my email. But then\u2026<\/p>\n Mike took things to another level and suggested moving all<\/em> the home screen apps out of sight to a \u2018second screen\u2019 that you need to actively choose to access by swiping left (*on an iPhone – other smartphones are available). Here\u2019s what happened to my home screen after implementing his idea;<\/p>\n