Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

It’s a motley assortment of tips, resources, and links that will hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for the upcoming week. Enjoy!

What I’m reading —

The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything by Derek Thompson

A fascinating piece on how to sell people on ideas and products. The key? If it’s something new and suprising, make it feel familiar. If it’s something familiar, add something that’d suprising. Great examples in this article from Spotify’s Discover Weekly to movie sequels that illustrate this point.

A quote that’s inspiring me —

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different than the things we do.

— Albert Camus

“ah-ha!” thought of the week —

Reorganize your phone screen.

In last week’s learnings roundup, I wrote about the value of using tools for their intended purpose. In particular, I talked about how our smart phones are sapping our ability to focus due to their multifuctionality.

In an effort to put this into action, I’ve reorganized my iPhone screen into three main sections.

1. Communication (its primary purpose)
2. On-demand information (it’s secondary purpose)
3. Time Wasters (non priority)

I’ve also cleared up a lot of apps that I don’t use and kept my main screen simple with less than 12 apps. The key communication apps – Phone, Inbox, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Messages – were preserved on this screen along with Google Calendar.

On my second screen, I added some of my valuable but non essential apps. This includes Audible, Instapaper, TTCWatch (transit), Google Maps, and Weather; apps that provide on-demand information.

On my third screen, I group the embedded Apple apps, some additional navigation apps, and other apps that I don’t use on a frequent basis.

Finally, on my fourth screen, I put what I call my “Time Wasters”. Apps that usually lead to distraction. The two main culprits for me are Instagram and Safari. I’ve relegated these two to iPhone “Siberia” so it’s less likely that I spend time here. Plus, I’ll feel kind of guilty spending time in either of these apps.

Just a caveat here that my way of organizing things may not be the optimal way for you. And, of course, your apps will be very different from mine. The key here is that you’re using your smart phone as a tool that works for you and your intended purpose – not the other way around.

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Featured image by Tranmautritam.

As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Follow me on Twitter @peternakamura to see the full list of articles that I share on a daily basis.