Jason Ball

My New Year’s resolution was simple: spend less time on my phone Easy to say, hard to do. I turned off The Evil Red Notification Badge of Death a *long* time ago for most of my apps. Currently, I have only one app that I allow badge notifications for – VIP Email (which is still set to Fetch New Data manually, so it’s not a real time Red Alert). For a full tutorial on how to configure your phone for, I recommend the very good (and VERY long) post on how to improve your phone [How to configure your iPhone to Work for You, Not Against You].

Both personally and professionally, I’ve gone through a process where I’ve evaluated how I work and what I work on, and how I might be able to make a difference within my sphere of influence. This isn’t a navel-gazing or self promotion post, so I’m not listing the things I’ve done or am doing, but rather posting this in case you are thinking the same thing. – they look like plastic and act like plastic, but they decompose. And that’s something to be really excited about 🙂 If you’re doing some cool things, please shout – tweet, DM, comment, etc.

I was doing my favorite thing (surfing) with my favorite people, so felt I only needed to be reachable by phone, in case of emergencies. I finally download Moment and see in glorious detail how much of my life is spent on my phone: on average 4 hr 42 min per day, or 29% of my waking life. I’m starting with weekends (work week is hard given how much I hop around, and I’m on the phone constantly for work). The objective is to focus on what I’m doing while I’m doing it.

But travel and life conspired to get me drinking coffee again – and I love coffee. And matcha does still have caffeine (25mg vs 150mg+ for filter coffee). This is still only 50mg of caffeine before noon vs 2-3 cups of coffee with 150mg of caffeine each. There you have it – three key tips to improving your sleep: ZMA, mattress topper and quitting coffee.