Productivity Hacks - Apple Reminders

Throughout 2020, COVID has impacted everyone in many different ways. My travel plans, work arrangements, and expectations for the year have been completely changed. Despite these adjustments, I have also been given a bounty of gifts. This includes having more time to myself, more virtual connections with friends, and an increased focus on reflection. As a result, I have spent a significant amount of time reading, developing a website, and trying to understand how to use this time wisely.

This exercise over the past 8 months has allowed me to eliminate bad habits that have wasted my time in the past and identify good habits that have been especially useful. My ultimate goal has been to use what I have learned throughout this experience to replace old habits with positive habits in order to boost productivity in my future self.

The Idea that Turned into a Reminder

As I begun this undertaking, I understood that a list would be necessary to capture my ideas for future improvement. When I started the process of brainstorming and developing a list on my phone, I realized that the very object I was using to create this productivity list was a significant source of my good and bad habits. It became clear to me that I should dive deeper into how I spend time using my phone. I developed an overarching question that could help me answer this. How could I better myself by transforming my phone into a useful tool instead of letting it control my habits?

The endless supply of applications stuck out to me as one of the most important aspects of phone usage. From the categories of AR to Weather, the sheer amount of individual apps can be overwhelming. The colorful pictures and persuasive algorithms in the App Store also contribute to customers downloading unnecessary apps. Reflecting on my past experiences, each app looses it's appeal after about a week and then ends up causing future distractions in the form of notifications or boredom clickbait. Are all of these apps necessary?

After spending time looking through every app on my phone, I was able to sort each one into one of two categories; Those that I depend on each day and those that I rarely interact with. I came to the mind boggling yet already known conclusion that most of the apps I had on my phone were useless. It was time to eliminate these time wasters and keep the apps that were simple, yet provided the functionality that could help me improve my habits.

One area of my life that I found particularly interesting was how I managed my tasks, reminders, and ideas that popped into my head on a daily basis. I decided to ask myself what application do I use to manage this information? To those reading, what do you use? After some time, I was able to identify where I have stored all of this vital information. Surprisingly, I found that there was no need to search for a new app or download something off of the internet. The Reminders app (which comes pre-downloaded on any iPhone) was all that I needed to help boost productivity.

Side note: I would be remiss without stating that there are a ton of other useful features within the iPhone that can boost productivity. I will dive into those in later posts.

The Apple Reminders app has been one of the biggest life savers and productivity tools that I have used. You may be thinking that this isn't a massive realization but I would argue it is. People may know about this app but the sad reality is that I have seen, through my own experience, that not a lot of people actually use it to their benefit.

I used Apple products throughout most of my high school years and I remember never using or even looking at the Reminders app. It seemed useless! Once I enrolled in college, I found that it might be necessary to have a place where I could quickly store thoughts that popped into my head. Reassessing the Reminders app, I decided to give it a try because the app was already downloaded on my phone and there had been a new update. When I looked through the App Store before finalizing a decision, I found a ton of task apps that could be used instead. Overwhelmed, I knew that they all needed to be downloaded, seemed complicated to use, and would just clutter my phone. The fact that I already had this app, and that there was interconnection between my phone, computer, and other apple products made it the optimal choice. Fortunately, I made a smart decision. To this day, I have the app placed at the bottom of my screen due to it's importance to me.

Optimizing the Reminders App

Now let's dive into the useful nature of the Reminders app and how it can help you develop better habits. As I have said from the beginning, the whole point of this "journey" is to optimize oneself in order to increase future productivity while reducing distractions. It is important to remember that simplicity is key. When creating categories, reminders, etc. it is important to ensure that there are no massive paragraphs and only a limited number of categories. I would recommend starting with about 5 -10 categories that encompass all of your reminders. The less categories you have, the easier it is to identify where reminders belong, and the easier it is to determine the purpose of each reminder.

As you can see in the picture to the right, I use a total of 7 categories. As life changes, this list can also be changed. By keeping the number of categories small, I am able to keep ideas organized while knowing the purpose of each reminder. The ability to customize color and an identifying picture for each category provides an added feature that helps to separate reminders. The name of each category is entirely up the user but is something that should not be taken lightly.

The "Target List" category is one that I use everyday. The inspiration for the category name came after listening to Jocko Willink discuss how he approaches tasks during one of his podcasts. For those that have not heard of Jocko, he is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and best selling author among many other things. During this podcast, he presented the idea that he approaches tasks like they are targets. Like targets, tasks should be honed in on individually. After identifying the target, the target should be attacked with whatever means necessary. Once the attack is complete, the target can be crossed off the list.

I love the way he described this. Instead of distracting oneself and trying to multi-task (literally and figuratively), the focus should be on just one task. All attention should be given to that targeted task until completion. Then it can be possible to move on to the next task and begin a link of task completion.

Ultimately, I decided to name my general task list the Target List. Now, whenever I think of a task that needs to be completed, I quickly open up my phone and type out the task in this category. The idea is simple and makes jotting down information when time is limited easy. When I have more time later on in the day, I can open up the list and remember what I need to get done with simplicity.

As I said before, it is also important to review each task once you have written it down. When I have a minute later on in the day (all it takes is ONE minute), I go back into the list and estimate an amount of time that I think it will take to complete the task. This gives my future self an approximate amount of time in which the individual task can be completed. (Check out the picture below for an example). It is important to ensure that when doing this, the estimated time is reasonable and achievable. This gives you peace of mind to know that the task can be completed quickly. Before I started following this technique, I remember looking at my task list and panicking because there were so many reminders that I needed to complete. Now I know how long each one will take and it gives me a better foundation when I feel like targeting each task.

Once I feel satisfied with the general direction of the task, I check to see if it belongs in any other category. If the task is more general, it will remain in my target list waiting to be tackled later on. If not, it can easily be moved to another category by dragging and dropping. Like I said before, this process takes only ONE minute, so there is no reason that it can't be done efficiently.

Another important category that I use daily is called "Goals." Within it, habit forming ideas are placed in the format of reoccurring tasks. Some examples include meditating for 10 minutes each day, reflecting on my goals every month, and checking my budget each month. The tasks that are in this section are all very important, and have helped me to develop positive habits and eliminate negative habits over the past 8 months. The possibility to make goals reoccurring also allows for reminders at various scheduled times. This includes setting reminders for the morning, or at night once work is over so that I can complete something if there is a deadline. I can be a forgetful person at times, so the reminders app is key in helping me remember.

One of my favorite categories is called "Gifts." Included in this folder are individual categories referring to family members or friends and the gift ideas for that person. Every time that someone mentions an item that they want or are interested in, I quickly write it down as a reminder under their respective category. If you struggle coming up with good gift ideas for people, this a very useful way to eliminate that struggle once and for all. Who knows when an item in the list will be useful in future gift giving endeavors. The sharing feature is also very handy. If someone you know asks for gift ideas for a specific person, it is easy to share your list with them, giving them access to all the items that are contained in the individual list.

I even have created a gift list for myself. In this list, I write down any items that I think I want. Personally, I think it is very important to have a gift list for yourself so that it is almost impossible to make impulse decisions. Once you add an item to your own personal list, you must let that item sit in the list for a month (or any lengthy period of time). After that time period is over, you can consciously evaluate the decision to buy it or not without the impulse decision looming over you. Most people tend to buy things in the moment because of a feeling of excitement. If time is taken to get over this initial feeling, you can evaluate the decision much more clearly and fully understand if you really need the item or not. This has saved me from a ton of impulse decisions.

Other categories that have been useful for me include work tasks, future ideas, groceries and a list of people to contact. They are all pretty self explanatory so I don't feel the need to dive too deep into them. Remember that you can customize the app and it's information however you may like.

As you can see, the Reminders app has been of great use to me. The key to using it is to refer to it as a tool instead of something that takes up your time. Fill it with useful information in order to develop beneficial habits, and you will quickly realize just how productive you can really be. My ultimate goal has been to use what I have learned throughout this experience to replace old habits with positive habits in order to boost productivity in my future self. The Reminders app is one of the main reasons that I have continued down this path to productivity. With its simplicity, usefulness, and connectivity, it has helped me along the way. I hope that it can help you too!

Until next time,

Tim Phillips

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