My new Focus Mode for Mindfulness inspired by “We could all use a ‘This is Fine’ Focus mode”
This article by Victoria Song made me laugh by how accurate it made me feel. The last couple of years have felt like one tragedy after the next. With social media and internet news feeds I do feel more connected to so many friends and family around the world that I would never have been able to connect with as regularly, but some days it can create a lot of noise in my life. I have really enjoyed the changes in Focus Mode on iOS 16 and how much easier they are to set up (even with the iPhone recommending custom home screens if you wish) for different activities. I have them set up for personal, work, reading, exercise, gaming, driving, and most recently Mindfulness.
The Mindfulness is one that you can set up when your Apple Watch Mindfulness app is running to temporarily dismiss everything for that 1–3x minutes you are trying to collect your thoughts, but today I got the idea to take it to the next step and add a custom simple Home Screen meant to mimic the first iPhone experience and switch over my Apple Watch to the Breathe watch face. It even removes the notification badges from the apps on my Home Screen as as well pushes notifications back to the Lock Screen. For the Lock Screen I went with the Weather lock screen to keep things simple, but dynamic as the week goes on.
I’m going to give this Mindfulness Focus Mode a go when I decide to go into creative mode like editing photos, editing the podcast, or writing. Basically the idea of whatever I’m doing on my iPhone or iPad I’m just in that one thing. I’m actually using it right now as I write this Medium post. I normally like my iPhone to be this dynamic pane of glass with widgets and visual flare that changes throughout the day based off my location, things I’m doing, and time of day. I think that this new Mindfulness Focus Mode will help me to focus on things that build me up and make me a better person.
