Today I uninstalled WhatsApp to save 40 minutes a day

Wijnand Karsens
2 min readJul 11, 2017

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I’ve been trying to drop w’app before, but still use it 40 minutes every day. I came from 60 minutes every day, but I removed all notifications last month, and that took off 20 minutes.

Today, I decided to totally drop it, forreals. Dropping WhatsApp means one less place to look through irrelevant stuff, and that can save a lot of time. I will probably still have some unproductive conversations every day, but since I remove whatsapp from my life, there are going to be less ways to get to them.

Important conversations on whatsapp the last month: none

Even for meeting people I didn’t need whatsapp the past month.
I had a few meetings, but they went over or were arranged by other communication tools like skype, messenger, slack and e-mail. I’m certain that of all communication tools, whatsapp is by far the least productive and most procastrinative one.

I strongly believe in direct communication as opposed to chat because language is just a small fraction of the total message that comes across when communicating face-to-face. Chat, in its turn, is a small fraction of language: it are mere written words. Where are the tone, the body language, and the facial expressions? Right, in the real world.

Separation of concerns for control over time commitment

I want do be goal-oriented to be more productive at least 8 hours a day. My goals:

  • make the app
  • finish my last course for this year
  • do client work
  • get newsletter ready

My core activities I wish to completely separate from the less important stuff:

  • deep, hard, goal oriented learning = Learn React
  • deep, hard, goal oriented work = Code React, improve the report, Client transition to Ghost CMS, set up the news letter

Other activities that I wish to do on the side, after 8 hours of deep, hard, goal oriented work and learning:

  • Soft learning (browsing through interesting stuff, reading interesting books)
  • Talking (networking and socializing)
  • Sharing (presentation making, writing, video editing)
  • Planning and strategizing (work and life)

So let’s go for some deep, hard, goal-oriented work now, and stop writing. Bye!

P.S. What about you? I bet that reading this wasn’t deep, hard, goal-oriented work for you. Let me know how you arrange to be productive for yourself.

Originally published at karsens.com on July 11, 2017.

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Wijnand Karsens
Wijnand Karsens

Written by Wijnand Karsens

I am a programmer, writer and entrepreneur. Read more from me on http://karsens.com/

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