82 | Phone Declutter Made Simple: Why Your Phone Feels Overwhelming and How Clearing the Clutter Improves your Focus

Okay, so when you pick up your phone, how does it feel? Does it feel calm and easy to navigate, or does it feel a little cluttered? For most people, it's the second one, and my guess is that you have lived with that feeling for a little while, and it just feels normal, and you've really never quite set aside the time to investigate or do anything about it.

I am so glad that you're here today because I have something I'm excited to share with you, and I want to start by reminding you how good it feels to declutter.

I want you to think about a drawer or even a closet in your house.

Now, not a perfectly organized one, but the kind that is overstuffed and maybe even a little too hard to close.

The one where things have collected over time, you know, one item at a time until it becomes the drawer or the closet that you avoid opening.

I call mine the junk drawer.

I think nobody decides to have a drawer or a closet like this.

It just happens.

It happens gradually until one day you open it and you think, "How did it get like this?" Well, newsflash, your phone has been doing the exact same thing.

Think about the apps you downloaded on a whim or the notification permission that popped up and you just tapped it without really thinking.

You know that pop-up that says, "Allow notifications"? Or if you're like me, the screenshots that you saved for later and that I really sometimes never look at again and definitely never deleted, or a subscription you forgot about, your camera roll that grew from 100 photos to thousands without ever making a conscious decision to let that happen.

And just like that overpacked drawer or closet, your brain eventually stops seeing it.

You adapt around it.

You scroll past the apps that you never use.

You swipe away the notifications that you don't care about.

You really work around the clutter without realizing that that's what you're doing until it starts shaping your habits.

Now, I've mentioned on this podcast before, but I want to remind you again that there's research that suggests that the mere presence of a smartphone reduces cognitive performance.

So that means that if your phone is just even sitting beside you, even if it's face down or silent, not being touched at all, your brain is still allocating attention to it.

Isn't that wild? And honestly, I've actually started paying attention to that in my own life, and time after time, I see the truth of that research showing up in my day-to-day life, so much so that more often than not, I've been leaving it in another room when I'm trying to focus on a specific task.

Now, imagine how much more a cluttered phone is doing that to your brain in the background.

A cluttered phone is not just an aesthetic problem.

It can create a serious issue for your attention span and your focus, and so often that trickles over into your mind and into your heart, and ultimately it can affect your peace.

And for those of you who care about being present, intentional, and living out your faith, the bottom line is I think it's a stewardship problem.