Chris Hannah

A week ago I wrote about wanting to cut down on phone usage. I kept that idea in my mind throughout the week, and tried to get an idea of what the problem was.

Just to give some raw data, my average screen time for the week before last was around 6 hours per day. This past week it's just under 4 and a half hours per day.

So you could say that's an improvement, and I guess it is. But last week was more about myself noticing trends, and seeing what I could do without any major effect, and just by reminding myself occasionally that scrolling for hours may not be the best use of my time.

I noticed that I have a few occasions where I feel I want to grab my phone:

• When I'm between tasks.
• On my commute.
• When I'm bored.
• When I'm procrastinating.

Essentially, I tend to use my phone to fill gaps in time.

As for what I do on my phone, here is the past week split by category. Including only those which I have spent over 30 mins in the whole week, and only the apps/websites that have reasonable usage

• Social - 9 hours. (X, Instagram, Messages, Threads, Mastodon...)
• Entertainment - 5 hours. (YouTube, Spotify...)
• Other - 3 hours. (Remote, Home...)
• Utilities - 2 hours (Work Chat...)
• Games - 2 hours.
• Productivity & Finance - 1.5 hours. (Mail, Claude...)

I thought about the idea of using my phone less over the week, and I realised that it's not the phone itself that I want to stop using. Because a phone isn't really just a phone, it's a handheld computer^[1]. It can be used for important and useful tasks, such as communication, reading, listening to music, taking photos, etc. You could also say it can be a tool for entertainment, e.g. watching videos, playing games, etc.

The problem I've noticed that I have myself in regards to my phone, is that a lot of the time there's no intention behind how I use it. When I'm at work and I need to wait for something to compile, tests to run, or I'm waiting on a response from an agent^[2], my phone—or social media—is the first thing my mind gravitates towards. I'm now wondering how much time I'm wasting simply with these short bursts of usage.

Additionally, I was a bit torn with my commute time. On the 3 days that I travel to the office, I spend just over 3 hours per day commuting. That consists of some walking, but mostly on a ~35 minute train into London, and a ~15 minute tube ride, both ways.

For those train journeys, I don't have a reliable network connection, and I rarely even get a seat. So what I can do on them is already limited. Right now I resort to music, simple games that can fill time, or maybe catching up on RSS or social media.

I don't want to be too harsh on myself and say that I can't use my phone during my commute, or get annoyed that for these days, my usage is higher. But there's definitely ways in which I can use this time better. I'm going to try and explore a few podcasts that interest me, or books that I can read.

Although, I'm going to potentially have a look at a few ebooks to start off with. I already have a lot of physical books that I want to read, and I've started a few of them. But I can never find a way to build a reading habit. Hopefully I can combine a few things together, and both make better use of my commute time, give me something to do on my phone that isn't scrolling social media, and also help build a reading habit.

All in all, it wasn't a week of big revelations, but I do have a next step of where I want to improve. Next week will be another one of trying to slowly start to use my phone in a more intentional way, and also stopping myself when I'm only getting my phone out to waste time.

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1. I've got a lot more thoughts on this that I may delve into in the future. ↩︎

2. Probably more on this soon as well. ↩︎

I've been reflecting on my favourite films, and I've come up with three:

• Perfect Days (2023)
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
• Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

Those are my three favourite individual films. But like most, there are many film series that I'm also fond of. Mine are:

• The Hobbit
• The Lord of the Rings
• Twilight
• Harry Potter

I would like to note that none of these are guilty pleasures.

I would also like to note that although these are mentioned as my favourite films, their respective book forms and soundtracks are also some of my favourites.

After realising my average phone screen time was 6 hours a day, I've decided I want to start using it less. Although, I don't have any specific goals in mind just yet.

First I will give myself a week to try and naturally use it less. Which I hope will help me detect where I usually reach for my phone, and also help me identify suitable replacements.

As a start that means X, Instagram, and Mail have been removed from my home screen. I've also added my bank card to my Apple Watch to avoid needing taking my phone out at the train station. And the next thing I want to do is to setup Spotify on my Watch so I can have one less reason to take my phone out of my pocket.

I'll share more updates here as the week progresses. Hopefully by the end of the week I would have both lowered my average screen time, and also identified a few areas that need some attention.

Sam Henri Gold:

There is a certain kind of computer review that is really a permission slip. It tells you what you’re allowed to want. It locates you in a taxonomy — student, creative, professional, power user — and assigns you a product. It is helpful. It is responsible. It has very little interest in what you might become.

The MacBook Neo has attracted a lot of these reviews.

This is one of my favourite pieces of writing I've read for a while.

It reminds me of my own experience, when I was a teenager, saving up to get my first Mac. A base model 13" MacBook from around 2005/06. That limited machine opened me up to the world of Apple, development, blogging, and what essentially led to my career as a software engineer.

Robert Birming:

Not knowing what to write about is probably one of the most common blogging struggles. Believing you have nothing interesting to say.

This is a great post. It serves as a reminder that just because you have become accustomed to something, doesn't mean it's not interesting.

I've had a 14" M1 MacBook Pro for over 4 years now, and it's served me well since then. Apart from storage limitations (500 GB), I haven't felt held back by this machine at any point.

However, I can't say I haven't been temped by shiny new things. Every time there's been a new generation of M chip released I wonder what the increase in performance would feel like.

But performance on it's own is unlikely to convince me to upgrade. I usually need three things:

• Some level of base performance. It can't be substantially worse in any area.
• It needs at least one objective improvement. This may be a performance boost.
• Something interesting. A new colour, chassis, display...

itsThe MacBook Neo certainly fits the last point. It's an interesting device, I like the size, the colours, and that it's super cheap and can be used like a travel laptop. But there's no objective reason for this to be an upgrade. It can just stay as an interesting device.

The MacBook Air is also intriguing. I like the 15" model, as I'd get a slightly bigger screen size, and a thinner chassis. Even if it's fan-less, and not a Pro version of an M chip, I think a base M4 chip would perform better than an M1 Pro, so there's an objective improvement. For something interesting,I like the darker grey colour, and I would really like a thinner laptop. But the screen would be a downgrade, so it doesn't meet the first point.

Once I was at this point, I thought I'd check the MacBook Pro. It's the same model, so it definitely meets the base expectations compared to my current laptop. It's the newer model, so objectively every component is better, especially the chip. But it's the same chassis, same colour, same weight... There's nothing particularly interesting about this laptop.

So without anything breaking, or my use case changing, I don't think there's a suitable upgrade available for me. After 4 years.

If I was being negative, I'd say the Neo was rubbish, the Air has a poor display, and the Pro is boring.

But I think the reality is that the base model 14" MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip is simply an incredible device. I wonder if after another 4 years, people will still be happily using M1 chips. I suspect so.

One reason I built Miniroll was because I wanted a place to discover new blogs to read. However, even if I added an explore page where you can view a random set of blogrolls and blogs that have been added, it's hard to judge a blog by a name.

But if you could just see a recent blog post, you may be more inclined to have a read.

That's why I've now create the Miniroll Global Feed for Miniroll Pro users..

It regularly goes through each public blogroll and fetches the lastest blog post. Then on the Global page, it will show the 100 most recent blog posts from all of the blogs.

I think it's going to be a better way to help with blog discovery. Personally, I plan on using it when I'm a bit bored and want something to read that doesn't evolve into an infinite social media scrolling session.

There seems to be a very big gap in the capabilities of modern computers compared to the actual use case of the general person. Whether it's a phone, laptop, or any type of technology. Marketing and society seems to tell you that everyone needs to have the best version of everything.

But it's not the case. As for the general person, when they use a computer, they're probably doing a very small set of activities. Most people aren't editing videos, developing software, or doing anything particularly resource intensive.

That's why I've long thought the best (Apple) computer for most people was probably an iPad. You can watch TV/movies, browse the web, play games, read emails, etc. It does everything most people need.

But there's still one "problem". It runs iPadOS. And even as far as it’s come, it’s still not macOS or Windows. So there was always some level of adaptation needed, even if minor. As a lot of paradigms on how computers are used are simply different.

Whereas now, if you want an Apple computer, and you either don’t need to do particularly complex tasks, or you’re on a tight budget, then I don’t think the iPad is the best choice anymore.

It's obviously too early to say this for definite, given it's literally only just been announced. However, I think the MacBook Neo will take that role. It's a modest computer compared to the other options, but it does everything that most people need it to do. It's also at a fantastic price point, which makes a big difference. And it's still a Mac, which brings a sense of quality and status.

I think the Neo will become the Apple computer that will be recommended for people that “just need a computer”.

At the start of 2026, I wrote about wanting to produce more this year, and so far I've been doing just that.

Back in January I launched Miniroll, a way to create, manage, share, and embed blogrolls.

Since then, I also soft-launched Miniship, which lets you create, manage, and embed changelogs for your project. And just last night I shipped Minifocus, which is very niche, it lets you a central "focus" state and then embed elsewhere.

Miniroll

Miniroll was the first thing I shipped this year, and it's doing well. There are over 30 users, some of them paying for the premium features, and over 30 public blogrolls.

It's still very fresh, but it's starting to feel like a relatively complete product. You can create private/public blogrolls, import/export OPML files, embed blogrolls with various styles and options, generate combined RSS feeds, and quite a bit more

I personally like checking the explore page, and using the Random Blog button to find something new.

Miniship

As I was working on Miniroll, I was keeping an updated changelog on the site. Which I then reaised could be a service by itself. So Miniship was born.

I didn't do a big launch, as I'm still working through feature development. But the core is ready right now, and now I'm working on adding a premium level. Right now you can create a single changelog which has it's own RSS feed, and it's own public page, which you can embed on your site directly.

I've already added changelogs for all three Mini projects to Miniship, and I already find it useful myself. So I suspect other people may also find some value in it as well.

Minifocus

Now for the latest experiment, Minifocus. This is a project that I built for myself, and was because I wanted a dynamic "current focus" on my blogs home page that didn't require a full rebuild to update.

I don't expect it to gain much attention, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's only me that uses it.

All you can do at the moment is to set a current focus, and then view it on a public profile or embed it on your site. There's an explore page, which in theoery will show the most 100 recent updates, but it's just myself a the moment.

I may add a few small tweaks, such as being able to see and quickly select recent entries. But I don't expect I'll add too much.

The little number of followers I have on Instagram are probably going to unfollow me soon. I think I'm going to start sharing square-cropped and overfiltered photos again.