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- The Drop In: Phones & Flow
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Edition 013: Phones and Flow
Welcome back to The Drop In — your weekly Flow-State OS for peak performance.
We live in a strange paradox: the phone in your pocket is the most advanced cybernetic augmentation ever created. At any moment, it can beam news from halfway across the world, summon a face-to-face conversation with a loved one, or provide answers to questions that once required years of study. It is the single most powerful tool for connection humanity has ever known.
And yet, it is also our greatest flow killer.
We’ve entered an attention epidemic. Our phones no longer just connect us; they consume us. Notifications are obvious culprits: pings, buzzes, banners; but the real problem runs deeper. It’s the entire way we approach our phones. The endless feeds. The quick hits of dopamine. The reflexive urge to “just check” one more thing.
The term doomscrolling didn’t exist a decade ago. Now it’s part of our daily vocabulary. That’s how deeply phone addiction has woven itself into modern culture.
So, how do we free ourselves from the shackles of this ever-present device, without abandoning its very real power to enhance our lives?
Here are a few practices that can help:
Airplane Mode FTW. In any deep work session, cut the tether completely. Nothing is so urgent it can’t wait an hour. Train your brain to know that focus time means offline time.
Reclaim Your Home Screen. Your phone’s design is not neutral. It’s built for stickiness. Flip that script. Remove every app that encourages passive consumption from your home screen. Replace them with tools that support creation, focus, or intentional connection.
The Launcher Advantage. On Android, launchers like Niagara strip away visual clutter, reducing your phone to a clean, functional tool instead of a slot machine for your attention. For iPhone, a minimal home screen with one row of essentials (and nothing else visible) works wonders.
My Android Screen using the Launcher Niagara.
Delay Your Dopamine. Create friction for addictive apps. Bury them in folders, log out after each use, or move them off your phone entirely. Every extra step helps break the unconscious reflex of tapping into distraction.
Design for Flow. Ask yourself: does this app help me create, connect, or restore? If not, why is it on your phone at all? Treat your device like a craftsman treats their workshop: only the essential tools belong within reach.
How Canva, Perplexity and Notion turn feedback chaos into actionable customer intelligence
Support tickets, reviews, and survey responses pile up faster than you can read.
Enterpret unifies all feedback, auto-tags themes, and ties insights to revenue, CSAT, and NPS, helping product teams find high-impact opportunities.
→ Canva: created VoC dashboards that aligned all teams on top issues.
→ Perplexity: set up an AI agent that caught revenue‑impacting issues, cutting diagnosis time by hours.
→ Notion: generated monthly user insights reports 70% faster.
Stop manually tagging feedback in spreadsheets. Keep all customer interactions in one hub and turn them into clear priorities that drive roadmap, retention, and revenue.
Phones aren’t going away—and nor should they. But when we treat them as tools rather than masters, we unlock the focused freedom to live in flow.
– Michael
Founder, The Drop In
& Author of ‘Human Traits — a novel exploring humanity’s relationship with AI’