JET#4 - Do You Really Need Multiple Apps to do the Same Job?

The other day I was out for dinner with a family friend who was on their phone answering a couple of email. I couldn’t help but notice the number of apps that they had installed on their phone, it reminded me of the cluttered Windows Desktop you see in the office with shortcut icons covering the entire screen (to the point where you can’t even see the wallpaper clearly).

While we were ordering I couldn’t help but think that they have essentially almost downloaded half of the Apple AppStore, and why do they need so many apps? Since it was just floating there, I thought to ask them “Why do you have so many Apps?” They then went on to justify their reasoning behind it, and I realized that they have at least 3-4 Apps doing the same thing.

The night moved on, however when I got home, I wondered if I had multiple apps performing the same tasks. While I did not have a few hundred apps installed on my device cluttered all over the homescreen, I did have a few doubles that could be uninstalled.

Meditation was an area that I was starting and stopping, and I always thought it was the app that was the issue; so, I kept downloading and testing.

I signed up for Headspace, which was OK for a year, and then I tried Beyond because it was a free annual trial. I didn’t really like Beyond, so I had a look at Waking Up by Sam Harris, and it just seemed like it was trying to do too much, not to mention it was the most expensive. Smiley Mind was another one recommended to me by a friend, but just wasn’t feeling it. I recall back when I was using Android I had a auto-renewal Calm Subscription for $7.99/yr which I enjoyed so tried it out on iOS and really liked it. The main reasons being it had all the pre-installed soundscapes during meditation, and it was slightly guided by the soothing voice of Tamara Levitt.

Now if I settled on Calm, why did I still have all these other Apps installed? Did I think I would miss out on something, that maybe they will one day have a precious nugget to offer that Calm doesn’t? 

I promptly uninstalled those other meditation apps and have decided to stick with Calm. Over the following couple of days, I checked for other Apps that may be serving the same purpose, and was surprised that I did have more duplicates, multiples of Todo Apps and Calendars seemed to be my kryptonite. I kept switching between these Apps from Todoist → Reminders → TickTik → Todoist and for calendars it was always a battle between the built-in Calendar and Fantastical. At time of writing, I’m on Todoist and using the built-in Apple Calendar having kept my App ADHD at bay.

How about you? Are there any apps cluttering your phone and mind? Could you possible start decluttering these?