Six months ago I reset all my devices to factory settings as I felt overwhelmed by apps, notifications and amount of information stored on my devices.

All those shiny, fancy new apps were growing on my devices. They were meant (were created) to make me productive, effective. To make my life easier.

Unfortunately, the opposite happened. As I spent a quarter (or even more) of my day serving those apps. I had to open them, fill something and so on. Remember and think about them.

If the app could do only one thing better than others on the App Store it was on my device. Some apps were duplicating functionality of other apps. And I had to install them because there was no perfect app for me.

They were slowing me down. I had to make decisions where to put this or that kind of information: in what app, in what cloud service, in which folder etc.

The same situation was with files, documents, notes, contacts, music, reading list and other things. Everything was just a mess.

As a result I had about 250 apps installed on iPhone, iPad and Mac. And storage on my devices was full (1TB on Mac, 256GB on iPhone and 1TB on iPad) How crazy is that?! :)

I tried to build an organized system. Tried to organize everything. At the end I had too complicated system that didn’t work at all.

I got tired from this.

I got tired from not being productive, effective, happy, successful as I wanted. My digital life became super complicated. And this complication in digital life made me less productive, effective, happy, successful in analog life.

So I decided to create my own rules on how to run my digital life. Because complicated things didn’t work for me. I chose a simplicity and minimalism in both analog and digital life.

Luckily I didn't have to start from scratch, because when you buy any Apple product you already have a set of pre-installed (default) apps on it. My decision was to relay only on default apps (as a starting point).

Why?

Because a long time ago there was a slogan or advertisement that sad something like this: your Mac (or iPhone / iPad) already has all apps you need to start working. Once you buy and launch it for a first time you already can do everything you need. All apps you need are pre-installed from a box.

This is really amazing and cool concept. For me it's mind-blowing because you don't have to search or buy any apps. You already have everything you need to do your work. All you have to do is just start working (on right, important and valuable things in your life).

P.S. If you remember this slogan, article, advertisement or anything else about the idea of pre-installed apps, please share it with me.

What is the “Minimalist Apple Life”

Minimalist philosophy to run your life (both, digital and analog) using Apple products. But there is an important clarification. This digital life is a part of analog life (real world). And this digital life is supposed to help us to be the best in any area in our analog life.

If your digital life is a mess than your analog will be a mess too. But the main reason or problem is definitely is in your analog life, that’s why you have problems in your digital life.

But if you want to start from a blank sheet of paper, a digital life is a first and probably the best place to start. A fresh start in digital life will give you an amazing feeling of a new page of your life.

It’s easy and not that difficult to start from scratch. To start again. To have one more chance to change yourself to start living the life you want.

Sure, starting from scratch in digital life will not change your real life. Because if you don’t change your mindset and behaviour in your real (analog) life, you’ll end up the same result in some time: a chaos, a mess and disappointment.

A fresh start in digital world will support biggest changes to better life in analog world.

What I did

Some steps I took to move to the life I want.

Export -> Delete

I exported all photos, contacts, music, files, documents, bookmarks, books, notes, articles to read later, saved tweets, iCloud and Dropbox files and so on to an external hard drive and deleted this information on my devices and online services.

I unsubscribed from all email newsletters (most of them I never had time to read). Unfollowed everyone in all social media. Cleaned my RSS app.

At the end everything was empty. No files on my devices and cloud storage, no notes in Apple notes, zero songs and playlists in Apple Music.

Factory reset

After that I restored my iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch to factory settings. No restoring from backup. Setup as new.

I wanted that feeling when you buy a new iPhone or any other Apple product. It has nothing in it, only some apps. No clutter. No information at all.

How cool is this feeling… I wish I could keep it running as long as possible. I wanted the same feeling in my analog life. Where everything is easy, simple, light and at the same time strong, stable and powerful.

New mindset

I didn’t want to get back to the old days with overwhelm and clutter. I wrote down some rules to support my journey.

Do not install any third party apps. Use only default apps for a month. During this time pay attention on my wishes about other apps and write them down to reflect on them later.

Surprisingly, after a month, almost all my wishes about other apps were gone. I didn’t want almost any (except some really important for me: password manager, dictionary, a PDF app, VPN and ad blocker).

Next step (or rule) was to live with this basic and minimalist setup as long as possible. And reflect about missing apps during my abstinence from installing and using tons of apps.

Do not save anything for reading later. It was also important, as before my reading list was growing too fast. In a week I could add more than 100 articles, sites, blogs, new newsletters, interesting books. So I stopped saving. I decided to never clear my browser history and if something I found some time ago will interest me – I’ll be able to find it in a history. This helped me to get rid of clutter and the feeling I don’t have enough time to read everything I want and disappointment from this.

Six months have passed. I’m feeling great. I still use only default apps. They are on their default positions.

All six month I’ve been developing a new mindset and rules to live the life I want. It was damn hard. Right now I’m more happy now than I was before. This minimalist analog and digital Apple life mindset is still work in progress, but I’ll share all principles of this mindset in which I’m 100% sure in other posts.

I don’t have to make all those small decisions I made before:

• Which app should I use?
• In what app / place is that information?
• Should I save this piece of information?
• What can I do with this information?
• And so on, so forth. No need to write them all here. I hope you get the idea.

Being unsubscribed from every newsletter, RSS feeds, twitter accounts helped me to stop checking those places all the time. It also limited my time spent there, because I manually searched the most interesting twitter accounts, RSS feeds. After finding several of them I could easily stop spending my time there. I realised that even most important and interesting stuff shouldn’t be read daily and they weren’t that useful as I thought. It was a hunger from information, unhealthy. Now it’s gone.

It’s time to install some apps now

6 months have passed. Only now I’m 100% sure what third party apps I really need. I know they will definitely improve my life, will make it easier as they will make my communication with digital devices easier. They will help me to be more productive, effective and happy.

In future posts I’ll write about these apps.

How I wrote this post

It was entirely written using Apple Notes. I like (in most parts) how Apple develops this app. There are places that must be improved, but even now it’s powerful for me. The more I use it, the more I like it. Especially because I have only one app for notes instead 3 :)

Music I listened to while writing this post

• https://music.apple.com/en/album/dark-matter/886614054?i=886614065&l=en
• https://music.apple.com/en/album/equal-measures/1443584944?i=1443584949&l=en
• https://music.apple.com/en/album/its-alright-ariano-kin%C3%A0-marco-bruzzano-re-club-remix/1502548018?i=1502548206&l=en

Questions, ideas, suggestions

I’d love to hear a feedback from you about this topic and approach. I’ll be happy to discuss it and hear what you think.

I’m interested if you have similar situation and I wonder what apps you relay on to run your daily life.

Or maybe you’d love to take the same journey to make your analog and digital life effective, productive, successful and happy. I can help you with this.

You can contact me via this email.

P.S. I'm not a native English person, so sorry for my typos, mistakes and sometimes difficult language. I'll do my best to make my English better and improve my writing. If you find any mistake or anything that can be written better - please send me an email. I'll appreciate it.

Simple doesn’t mean dumb or limited at all. In most cases it means smart and powerful. So keep it simple - Paul Tuzowski.