Quantcast
This simple iPhone hack can make you more productive – Metro US

This simple iPhone hack can make you more productive

We all know our phones are the technology equivalent to junk food. We know that in moderation they’re fine, and even healthy. We’re also well aware that the amount we actually consume is in no way moderate. The dings, pings and clicks our phones make are practically the soundtrack to our lives.

But phones, like gummy candies and potato chips, are staples of the modern world, whether we like it or not. There’s no getting rid of them in the foreseeable future — but we can work on how much they distract us when they should be helping us. Turns out, much like everything else, there’s a simple iPhone hack for that, and it just might help you break through those tech tethers.

By going into your iPhone settings, you can change your display to “grayscale,” which could potentially make your iPhone less distracting as you go about your day, as Lifehacker recently explained. At the very least, disabling the rainbow show that comes out of your screen every few seconds might make your cell less eye-catching from that perch on your desk. That could help you resist those habitual “two-minute breaks” — we all know how those end.

Suggested by Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google and founder of Time Well Spent, a nonprofit designed to help us save ourselves from technology, the hack lies in your settings app. Just follow these simple steps:

Go to Settings

Click on General

Click on Accessibility, followed by Display Accommodations

Lastly, click on Color Filters

Once there, you can click “switch color filters on” and select grayscale. If you want to make sure the ability to return to a colorful digital world is on call, return to Settings then General, followed by Accessibility and finally Accessibility Shortcut, where you’ll scroll to the bottom and select Color Filters. Then you can triple-click the home button and toggle between grayscale and color at your every whim.

If you’re already indulging in Apple’s Nightshift functionality, a scheduled mode in which your phone shifts to warmer colors, which are reportedly better for your eyes and natural sleep cycle, this feels like a logical next step in weaning yourself from iPhone addiction. Some may be thrown off by the jarring lack of ROYGBIV, but we’re starting to think the world in gray has never looked better.