constantly interrupts me

and doesn't have a silent mode?

My wife.

(laughs)

I'm a dead man.

They say with great power

comes great responsibility.

And that couldn't be more true

when it comes to the computers we carry around every day

in our pockets.

I, like many of you,

have battled with how to bring my phone into my life

without it taking over my life.

So in this video, I want to talk about how I use my phone,

and the apps I use regularly that actually improve my life,

instead of drain my energy.

This is what's on my phone.

(chimes)

- Oh, Matt, you got a message.

Who's...

(phone clanking on the floor)

- It's a friend from work.

I would never just unlock my phone and hand it to somebody,

especially somebody like you,

you filthy bastard.

But, I wanna try to get as close as I possibly can

in this video.

So, I'm gonna walk you through my phone,

detail all of the apps that I currently have installed,

the ones that have added the most value to my life,

as well as, I think more importantly,

the things that I choose not to put on my phone.

So, let's just look at it.

This is what's on my phone.

So by the way, before I get into it,

I will be leaving links

in the description for everything I mention in this video.

So the first thing you'll notice

when you look at my phone is that

I don't fill up the entire screen.

On this home screen here,

I only keep the apps that I use on a regular basis.

Usually those that I'm coming back to every week.

On the second page here,

I have the apps that I use less frequently.

So I get a lot of use out of Apple's alarm clock,

in addition to using it for my morning alarm,

I also use it to remind me of meetings,

phone calls, and important events.

I realize, I could set a reminder

notification through my calendar,

but the assurance of an alarm clock is worth it for me.

I just worry that if I put my phone on silent mode,

I won't receive those notifications.

I haven't missed a phone call or meeting

since I've taken this approach.

I use a lot of Google products for work,

so I tend to go with their native apps

instead of syncing them through Apple.

These are some of my plans for the weekend.

You might've seen in my last video

that I recently made the switch

from storing all my personal photos and videos on iCloud

to Google Photos.

I've been really happy with that switch

over the past couple of weeks,

syncing across devices is instant

and the search feature is really powerful.

So I can just click on Natalie's face here,

and these are all based upon facial recognition

so I don't have to do any extra work.

A little bit creepy but it works.

I use Apple Wallet to store all my tickets for travel,

as well as my gym login barcode.

I use the notes app on a daily basis,

I created separate folders for different categories of work

and one for personal.

This Videos folder stores all my video ideas.

I create a separate note for each idea,

and then I flesh them out further right within the app,

usually on my MacBook Pro.

This is Audible,

Audible is actually the sponsor of this weeks video,

I'll talk more about them at the end of the video,

as well as, talk a little bit about this audiobook

I'm listening to now by Gary Vaynerchuk.

It's a really good one.

This app is Dashlane,

and I use it to store all my passwords.

This is the Waking Up app, by Sam Harris.

Everyday he adds a 10 and 20 minute meditation.

He has other content in there as well,

but I mostly use it for the meditations.

Now I usually don't have Instagram installed on my phone,

but I've been posting to IGTV a lot lately

and wanted to get a better feel for the platform

and engage more on Instagram.

I haven't found it to be too distracting lately,

but I'll probably clear it from my phone

as soon as I find I'm using it just a little bit too much.

I use Slack for communicating with my team.

At the bottom of my phone of course,

we've got the phone and messages app,

as well as Spotify.

When I'm working, specifically when I'm writing,

I like to listen to Deep Focus or low-fi beats.

They really help me to get locked in to my work.

This is some of the other music

I've been listening to lately.

And this app is called TeuxDeux,

it's how I manage tasks for work and personal,

I like it because it allows me to organize my to do list

on a daily basis.

It's super simple, but works for me.

I'll add a little note here,

(keyboard typing)

You know what?

I don't really have time to do this today,

so I'll just push this until tomorrow.

And on the second page here,

I have different folders

categorizing work, film, other, as well as travel.

If we open up work, we have Google Chrome,

looks like my brother was using my phone again,

Google Drive, Sheets, Docs,

and FreshBooks for scanning receipts.

In the film tab I've got a couple of films tools here,

from GoPro, to Camera Connect for Cannon,

as well as ROV Motion for my electric slider.

And let's go into the other folder,

I'm not gonna go through all of these apps

because I don't use them very often.

GuitarTuna has been great for tuning my guitar,

iRobot for our robot vacuum cleaner,

which actually is surprisingly amazing!

Scannable has been a great way

for me to store my documents digitally.

And nothing else really super interesting

on the rest of these.

And finally we've got travel.

I use Maps.Me when I'm traveling out of the country,

it works really great, it's good for navigation.

I don't have an allegiance to any specific airline,

basically the one that is cheapest,

as well as least painful.

And we've got Nest here,

which is for home security.

(sirens)

that's probably not what you think it is,

it's actually just money, drugs, and chili pepper.

So, it's really not much of a big deal.

I don't know why you guys are acting all weird about it.

And that's it.

That's everything that I have on my phone.

I hope you guys got a little bit of inspiration

from checking out how I organize my phone.

Again, I think the biggest things are

what I don't have on it.

I don't have a whole lot of social media,

I do have Instagram like I said, for now.

But I'll likely delete it in a couple of days.

I don't keep email on my phone,

That's something I've been doing for,

I would say,

the past couple of years now.

And that has been hugely helpful,

in not keeping me distracted.

If I'm traveling, I'll usually just download it to my phone.

That's an important thing to mention,

if you delete these apps,

definitely check on which app you're deleting,

you usually don't lose the data.

So with Instagram, I delete it,

nothing happens, and I can reinstall it at anytime.

And I find that in the past, I have kinda hidden apps away,

like three pages deep

and then put them into folders.

But I always found my way to them.

I could just swipe down and just search for Instagram.

So that, typically,

hasn't helped me as much as just deleting the app.

That amount of friction,

having to go into the app store,

download it, sign in, find my password,

put it in, and then log in,

it's just, I'm like, Ah, screw it, it's not worth it for me.

So, hope that helped you out.

Hope you guys got some tips

about how to organize your own phone.

So when it comes to life advice,

I've always leaned on authors and audio books to help me.

And one person,

who I've been consuming and listening to a lot lately is,

Gary V.

His audio book, Ask Gary V, is available on Audible.

And it's packed with tons of great, practical advice.

What I love specifically about Gary's audio book is that,

he doesn't just follow a script,

he kinda goes off the cuff and gives these hot takes

and deep dives into the topics he's talking about.

Start listening with a 30 day audible trial.

Choose one audio book, and two Audible Originals

absolutely free.

Visit audible.com/mattdavella

or text "mattdavella" to 500 500.

The links are in the description below.

Thank you guys so much for sticking around

and watching this video.

As well as, checking out my sponsor, Audible.

It's sponsors like Audible that

help me to reinvest back into my videos.

Hire amazing people to work with,

and just make the best videos that I possibly can.

So, it really means a lot to me.

I'll see you guys next time.