How many hours do YOU spend on each mobile apps? Time to check as time is precious


How may hours do you spend on your mobile per day? And on your PC/Mac?
What are the top apps you use on your mobile? Your PC/Mac?

I recently installed "time tracking/diet" apps on my devices. I learned a lot of things about me. And changed a lot of things.

Among things I learned:

  • I usually spent from 3 to 4 hours per day playing with my phone (my new Target is less than 2).
  • Instagram is (I should say was as I change my habits) the top app I used on mobile. More than 1 hour a day... Facebook was close, with about 1 hour per day. Then Whatsapp. (All Facebook apps, crazy), then Gmail (I use if for pro & personal email management).
  • When I work from home, I spend a lot more time in front of my Mac. From 6 when I'm in the office to 10ish hours. Logic, I interact less with humans as I'm alone and I don't commute.
  • On my Mac, Outlook takes me usually 3 hours a day (peak is 6 hours, I hope it's a bug, not sure...). It's the top app/website I use, far from others. Then come Atlassian's wiki (where I write product specs and organize my projects), Lucidchart (to do UI zonings), Adobe Connect (my conf call tool, to talk to my colleagues in India, Japan, US, etc.) and Jira (to manage and monitor engineering tasks).


How I change my habits based on these findings?

  • Paying attention. It looks naive but the same way your reduce donuts when you realize one donut represents a 1-hour running session in calories. When you know, you adapt, naturally.
  • Move Facebook and Instagram to the second screen of apps on my phone. Again, it looks naive, but it literally changed everything. I use Facebook and Instagram 4 times less.
  • Cut notifications from Facebook and Instagram. Basically, the global advice is: cut every notification except the ones from humans actually reaching you and who need an immediate answer (messaging apps, Slack, SMS...) and critical news you need to act on immediately (you'll notice it's almost 0). I cut my calendar notifications too! Seems stupid but it's cool. Imagine, if you have a lot of meetings, your calendar app pops literally every 30 minutes, add to that meeting invites... It's too much.

Tools I use to track my time:

Final word: 
Knowing and managing carefully the time you spend on mobile devices and computers is more important than what you think. We all have 80ish years on earth. Whether you're rich or not, you'll never be able to renew this credit or extend it significantly. 
As a result, time is the most precious resource we have. Like other precious resources, we must take care of it and protect it.