Morning Coffee 85: November 27th, 2023

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Good morning. I’m writing this during a four day weekend (Tried my best to do as little as possible, to relax and decompress). Over the past few weeks, I’ve been preparing for the new year, and getting down to only the essentials in my life, both physical and digital. I already feel the weight lifted off of me because of this. Speaking of weight lifted, I’ve been consistently at 179 the last few days. That’s over 20lbs lighter than a year ago. Hoping to get even lower before the year’s over. Hope this letter finds you well. Press reply. Say hello.

Table of Contents

1. Current Home Screen
2. Cleaning Up Photos
3. Simple App Library

Current Home Screen

• Fantastical
• Carrot
• Matter
• Ulysses
• Journal
• Things

This is my only Home Screen. This and the App Library are my only two ways of viewing my apps.

Cleaning Up Photos

Cleaning up photos used to be a long and exhausting process for me. Until I built this system. It’s fairly simple, but the execution has a compound effect that I’m already reaping the benefits from after a year of using it.

Each day (or each day that I remember), I go into Apple Photos and go to the search box. I type in today’s date without the year. This gives me any photo that I’ve taken on that particular day, for every year.

This is a trip down memory lane for many years at once, while also giving me a digestible amount of photos to clean up. What starts out as 20 photos for that date, ends up being 4-5. It removes the daunting task of having to go through thousands of photos at once, but also gives me a system that’s repeatable.

By doing it this way, I’ve cleared that particular date for my future self, for every upcoming year. And even if I miss a day, it doesn’t matter, because that day will come back around in another year, and I’ll just clean it up then. A simple, no-pressure way of going through photos.

Simple App Library

A lot of us are overlooking the value of the App Library, simply because the amount of apps we have on our phone. When I started purging my entire collection of apps, only keeping the essentials, I quickly realized how clean and organized the App Library can be.

With each app I let go of, each section became easier to understand. Every app removed brought clarity to that group of apps. There was no more apps hidden behind a press. Almost every app on my phone is now seen on the App Library screen.

I recommend doing a hard sweep through your phone, and only keeping just what you need, nothing more. The more you remove, the more powerful your phone becomes.

This is Morning Coffee: a weekly newsletter that arrives in your inbox every Monday morning. I write about productivity, technology, and cool things I find on the internet. My wife wants this to be my only job, so pay what you want, purchase my books on Amazon, or join my Music Program.