[zahma]

I gave this a try. I'm already a skeptic towards cell phone usage, but I figured why not try to push it a little further by "minimalizing" my home screen.

Dumbify is easy enough to set up. It's not always an elegant solution as the list of supported apps is quickly exhausted and required me to make a shortcut. There's a delay and window transitioning from when I tap the link for Anki as Dumbify must first open its app, then go to the shortcut, and then open Anki. Not a huge latency, but noticeable and irksome at times when I want to do a quick search on Firefox. Maybe that's my fault for not trying to deliberately dumb my phone down further to the point where I don't even need a browser. How do we know when we're dumb enough with our phones? What level of distraction is acceptable?

The other major detractor is the fact that instead of seeing my badges on my homescreen, I just flip over one page. Mind you, these are only messenger apps, so that I can at least be reachable by those in my life. I don't have badges enabled on Mail or other apps. I don't have social media accounts, let alone the apps for them, yet my instincts are still to open and flip to the page with the badges. Maybe my behavior will change over time, but I am skeptical it will.