I find myself checking out pretty often and just making myself feel bad about the state of the world, or killing half an hour on stupid games that I could 100% live without. This is probably pretty common, and I’m wondering what other people have found as a way to do more productive things with their phones in the downtime.
I mean… there’s porn
And stock quotes!
I feel like there’s an opportunity to combine these things.
Something, something up and down and up and down and …
Porn quotes?
Honestly, since Reddit became dead to me, I spend a lot less time on my phone overall. Aside from the things you mention, I usually keep an eye on my work emails and messages, just in case there’s something I need to be ready for in the morning.
Aside from that, my phone’s primary purpose during personal hours is to use IMDb to settle friendly disputes with my wife in front of the TV. ;)
I don’t find much use for a phone. Mobile banking and web browsing is pretty much all I use it for. Don’t worry about being productive its a never ending hill to climb. Do what you need to do then enjoy the rest of your day
I mostly listen to music, read ebooks, take notes in class and work on termux, actually most of my time on my phone is spent on termux connecting to my servers, Essentially my phone is a pda with remote access
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I know that it’s more convenient to use a laptop, but i’m always on the move and lugging around a laptop isn’t really practical for what i do, plus my current laptop chews trough it’s battery in less than an hour, i’d need to be always connected to an outlet to not have the fear of it dying on me; so i just carry a foldable keyboard in my pocket, it’s not the best thing in the world but at least it’s better than nothing.
I take a lot of pictures. Mostly of my pets. Yes, I do actually look back at old photos and I love it.
I don’t have any social media (other than this, which I guess counts). Where my friends hit their Instagram or Facebook, I just scroll through my old photos. “aw look at the time the cat found a box” or “oh remember when we went to storm king?”.
Works fine. Less rage.
-Get a lot of spam calls and texts
-Read e-books
-Keep email notifications up to remind me to check them on desktop
-Watch Youtube to fall asleep
-Listen to my work in progress songs between working on them, take notes on what to do next
Read e-books
There have been times when I have wanted to do that, especially when I forgot my physical book when I’m outside the home and I have some spare time…
Regardless, I don’t know why I never feel comfortable with it, perhaps I’m a bit spoiled with my iPad and my Kindle, I have the same feeling for mangas and for comics.
It’s exactly for that convenience and random downtime that I keep a few on my phone! Waiting in line has never been so enjoyable.
Perhaps, as a backup option might be a good call.
With Inoreader I plugged in a bunch of RSS feeds of gaming news and stuff related to my hobbies. I like it because there is no comment section to engage with unless I really go out of my way, which I have no desire to. I get all of that out of my system here on Kbin.
What I find interesting is I was able to get one feed from a sub that doesn’t really exist in many forms on the Internet that I know of. I figured with the API fiasco that it wouldn’t work, but it does. It just spits out a text version of new posts for me essentially. Very useful for keeping up on VGM vinyl news.
I read the first page of hacker news twice a day. Once in the morning, and once at night. Usually nothing comes of it, but sometimes some new tech shows up with immediate application for one of my clients. Or someone posts something really insightful that makes me think.
If I want to play a game on my phone for 15 minutes? Fallen London. Great writing, tons of content.
I (strictly) have no social media apps on my phone. My rule is to decide how to spend time, then do it – never ever just do things to ‘kill time’ (it is, after all, time that kills us).
If I don’t know what to do, I study. I pick a subject and try to learn it to an ‘average’ level of competence. I typically do this ~2 hours a day, and it’s been my conscious habit for approximately 25 years so far. This is hard, but possible to do on a phone. Sometimes I’ll do research on a phone, and save the links to read properly on a laptop later.
People sometimes tell me to ‘live a little’. I don’t think they know the difference between living and dying. Every day, I become more. My neighbors spend their days at home drinking and eating – every day, they become less.
A foss game Lexica - the word sources are quite diverse so it’s very easy to learn new words.
I like making music, while phones aren’t ideal there’s definitely possibilities. Flip, G-Stomper, Koala Sampler and Kaossilator are my main go-to’s.
And I use my phone notes quite a bit, be it for lyrics or just organizing my thoughts, things I want to get done, ways to do them, lists of things. I do a lot of this handwritten but it’s handy having them written digitally too.
Pull it out. Look at the time. Remember I didn’t want to doomscroll. Put it back. Repeat.
Productive is not what I’d call what I do but anyway: I don’t follow things that make me miserable or even just “people”. My feeds are full of all kinds of fun stuff, like my fandoms or science or art. So I don’t ever “doom scroll”, really, but read about what other people thought about that newest episode or some new thought they had about an ancient episode or general fan squealing about a ship or the newest weird findings about spinosaurus or ‘look at these new photos Perseverance has taken’ or ‘look at this detail in this awesome painting’ or ‘this is how to improve this aspect in your drawings’.
Yes I am on tumblr. Yes I am on tumblr too much.
Read ebooks. Check email.
I’ve been playing chess and chess puzzles.
Learning languages with Duolingo, journaling, cooking apps, crosswords, browsing the Ikea app (but that could be considered doomscrolling - the doom of my bank account)
If I aint scrolling Lemmy I honestly don’t know anymore…
As a kid I had loads of games on it. Past-me would have looked at old-me and wondered what happened there. :pWhat happened there?
Strange events…
