Phone Addiction World Rankings

A recent study ranks the degree of phone addiction in different countries by finding the percentage of waking hours citizens spend with their phone screens.

The Philippines leads with people spending 32.53% of their days behind their small screens. The United States comes in at number 20 with 21.14%.

This is interesting, but I have questions about how they got their data. Also, I’d like to see these number broken down by age. Regardless of how they’re calculated, those numbers are too high. As humans, we do need time to be alone with our thoughts, and technology taken too far ruins that for a lot of folks.

Mac Power Users 688: Workflows with Adam Tow

Adam Tow is a longtime Apple user whose passions include development, photography, and the Newton. On this episode of Mac Power Users, he talks with Stephen and me about his various projects and the tools he uses to make them a reality.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • 1Password: Never forget a password again.
  • Fast Growing Trees: We keep you growing. Get 15% off your order.
  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

A Better Email Life After SaneBox

B.S. and A.S., as in Before SaneBox (B.S.) and After SaneBox (A.S.). There’s life before SaneBox, when your email is managing you, and life and your productivity after SaneBox, when you are efficiently managing your time and email. 

SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, is an email management service that automatically sorts your email into folders based on each email’s importance. If you’re sill checking boxes and clicking on trash cans to deal with emails individually everyday … there’s a better way. With SaneBox, you will be able to see what you need to read now. The emails that you can deal with later are put in a folder called SaneLater, which has the distracting emails that can wait for you. Keep the disruptions out so you can focus on what what’s important to you. 

You can try this out for yourself. Sign up for a free trial, and get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Give SaneBox a try and compare for yourself how you managed your email B.S. (that’s before SaneBox). 

Experimenting with Google Bard (MacSparky Labs)

I’ve been spending some time experimenting with Google Bard, Google’s competitor to ChatGPT. It got a few things right and a few things wrong, but this is an easy platform if you want to experiment with large language model artificial intelligence… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Focused 175: The To-Don’t List

Join Mike and me on this episode of Focused as we get caught up on listener feedback. We discuss journaling data, power naps, and choosing the things you aren’t going to do.

This episode of Focused is sponsored by:

  • CleanMyMac X: Your Mac. As good as new. Get 5% off today.
  • Indeed: Join more than three million businesses worldwide using Indeed to hire great talent fast.
  • Zocdoc: Find the right doctor, right now with Zocdoc. Sign up for free.