Digital Housekeeping: Systems for Mental Well-Being

General

Passwords

I put as many passwords as I can into my password manager. If possible, I try to make new accounts on websites instead of using OAuth to register. I don’t like the idea of centralizing a bunch of logins around a few single OAuth-enabled accounts. I could just be uninformed and paranoid, but I see a possibility where one OAuth implementer messing something up could result in everything else using those OAuth credentials being compromised. Sticking instead to traditional username/password authentication schemes for each website means that if that website gets compromised, I only lose that one account. That said my emails do get reused so that’s a bit lame.

Google

I would like to de-Google my digital life as much as I can. Still figuring out a better, uncostly cloud photo storage option that isn’t Google photos. As convenient as they have made my life, I have realized that I do not like how much control they hold over my digital assets. Additionally, I find more and more that Google’s actions as a company demonstrate a lack of ethics do not align with my personal ethics and values.

My phone

Homescreen and apps

The current setup is Nova Prime launcher with a self-made KLWP background on my Samsung Galaxy S25.

The custom homescreen gives me access to a few essential apps I use most frequently:

  • Clock
  • Calendar
  • Weather
  • Gallery
  • Phone
  • Maps
  • Messages
  • Spotify
  • Firefox
  • Aegis Authenticator (2FA)
  • Takoboto (Japanese dictionary)
  • Pleco (Chinese dictionary)

I’ve made most apps much harder to access. Swiping up on the home page brings up the app drawer, but the initial screen only shows me non-entertainment apps. It’s the utilities, email app, password manager, notes, etc. Deleting apps feels a bit too extreme to me for now. Apps like Reddit still serve a practical purpose if I’m researching a niche hobby, and Facebook I use from time to time for MarketPlace deals.

The real dopamine injector apps are entirely hidden from the app drawer tabs. If I really need to open those apps, I can find them through the app drawer search bar. It’s an additional layer of friction (that’s admitedly pretty thin) that forces me to think about why I’m actually opening those apps, because I’ve too frequently found myself mindlessly closing and re-opening these same apps with about one second of rest in between.

Screen settings

Nightlight kicks in everyday at 9:00 PM. Start reducing the blue light so that my mind can start to slowly wind down before bed. I’ve even been inspired to experiment with enabling black and white mode which saps all the colour out of my phone, but there were some moments where I actually needed to see accurate colours, so I haven’t really stuck with this one yet. I wish I could have it as a quick action in the pull-down settings menu.

My computer

At the end of the day, I prefer to shutdown my PC instead of putting it to sleep. One reason is that Windows keeps magically reawakening the PC when it’s supposed to not be on and it’s extremely annoying when that happens in the middle of the night when I’m supposed to be getting my healthy beauty sleep. The other reason is that it acts like a mental reset for me. The next time I turn on the computer, I am starting fresh with no windows open, no unfinished work on my screen, just a clean empty desktop. No strings attached to the computer while I’m away.

Desktop

I have “Show desktop icons” disabled. The leading philosophy here is that my computer should not be suggesting to me what to do. I’d like to be more intentional and use my computer only when I actually need it.