Focus your energy. Master your time.
Get It Done
1-2-3: How to Make Your Phone Work For You Instead of Against You
sent by Joaquín Kosegarten | September 01, 2026
Your phone is the most powerful productivity tool ever invented.
It’s also the most powerful distraction machine ever built.
The difference between the two isn’t the device.
It’s how you have set it up. And right now, the default settings are quietly working against you.
1 Idea
Configure your phone so doing focused work is easier than getting distracted.
2 Ways it saves you time
1. Your phone’s default layout is engineered to maximise engagement, which is the polite word for “keep you scrolling.” Bright icons on the home screen, badges, and effortless one-tap access to social apps all act as friction-removers for distraction. Just glancing at your phone costs the average professional 6 to 10 unintended detours per day, each one eating 5 to 15 minutes. Small changes in your phone layout can save you 30 to 90 minutes a day, without any willpower involved.
2. A focused phone setup also stops the secondary cost: the recovery time. Every time you fall into a 10-minute scroll, it takes another 20 to 25 minutes to fully refocus on what you were doing. Reducing the number of accidental scrolls cuts both the scroll time and the refocus time, doubling the time you actually get back.
3 Steps to Get It Done:
1. Move every social media and entertainment app off your home screen. Bury them in a folder, on the second or third page, with no badges. Make them findable, but not visible.
2. Replace your home screen with tools that serve your goals: calendar, notes, tasks, a meditation app, an audiobook app. Whatever moves you forward.
3. Turn your phone to greyscale during work hours. The colour drain quietly kills the dopamine hit that makes apps feel rewarding. Less colour, less pull, more focus.
Conclusion
Your phone isn’t the problem. The way it’s set up is.
A 10-minute redesign tonight can give you back hours every week. Do it once and let the new defaults do the work for you.
This is what the Environment step in Get It Done is built around: shaping your surroundings, including the digital ones, so the productive choice becomes the easy one.
“I have self-control, I don’t need to redesign my phone”
Maybe you do. But self-control is a finite resource, and the apps on your phone were built by teams of engineers and behavioural scientists whose entire job is to outsmart it. You are not weak for losing that battle. You are human. Redesigning the phone is not admitting defeat. It’s refusing to fight a war you don’t need to fight in the first place.
As promised — 1 minute that can save you hours
Yours in Getting It Done,
Joaquin Kosegarten
Author of Get It Done
Creator of the 1-2-3 Get It Done Newsletter
P.S. Fun Fact: Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, has called modern smartphones “slot machines in your pocket,” and the comparison isn’t metaphorical. The same intermittent reward mechanism that makes gambling addictive, called variable ratio reinforcement, is built directly into how social media feeds, notifications, and pull-to-refresh gestures work. A 2017 study from the University of Chicago found that the mere presence of a smartphone on a desk, even face-down and silent, measurably reduced participants’ working memory and problem-solving ability. The phone doesn’t need to ring or buzz to cost you focus. It just needs to be visible.
Join Me
Thanks for reading. You can get more time saving tips in my popular email newsletter. Each week, I share 1 idea, 2 ways in which it saves you time, and 3 steps to put it into action immediately. Enter your email now and start saving time!
P.S. Want daily ideas to help you get more done in less time without burning out?
How to Make Your Phone Work For You Instead of Against You
About the Newsletter
1-2-3 Get It Done is a weekly 1-minute read trusted by busy professionals who want to achieve more in less time without burning out.
Each issue gives you 1 idea, 2 ways it saves you time, and 3 steps to put it into action immediately.