We spend an awful lot of time staring at our phones. An average person spends over 3 hours a day on his/her smartphone. A vast amount of these hours is wasted away by endlessly watching Stories on Instagram, watching the fourth season of Suits on Netflix or watching the newest video of your favorite YouTube personality. However, watching stuff is a very passive and easy-to-do activity. What if you would spend a chunk of those 3 hours on something more interactive and worthwhile? Let’s make a list of (more) useful things you can do on your phone.
Learn a new language
Ever wanted to learn a new language or brush up your Spanish? There are some pretty good apps out there to improve your vocabulary, practice hearing and speaking and get to know some basics.
Some well-known apps for learning new words and basic sentences are:
DuoLingo (Android / iOS)
Memrise (Android / iOS)
Rosetta Stone (Android / iOS)
The first two apps are free, but Rosetta Stone requires a subscription plan after a three-day trial. These apps are perfect to learn at your own pace and they keep track of your personal progress.
If you want to take a more interactive approach by chatting to native speakers of your desired language, you could check out HelloTalk (Android / iOS)
Another route you can take is looking at some language courses. You can probably find some free basic speaking lessons on YouTube, but if you have a little money to spare your can purchase a more structured language course on Udemy.
Read eBooks or longer articles
Schedule your day
Practice mindfulness
Listen to podcasts or TED-talks
Organize your phone
Play chess, solve sudokus or challenge your mind in other games
Draw
Okay, I admit. Sliding our big, fat finger over a tiny glass device will probably not result in the next Mona Lisa. But who knows, maybe it will end up in the MoMa one day. Samsung Note users will have a slight advantage with their S-Pen(cil), but professional finger-painters can work with any tool, right? Can’t wait to see a guy repeatedly slap his dick on screen and create an exact reproduction of Bathers at Asnieres, from the famous pointillist painter Georges Seurat. You could try one of the following apps to create your masterpiece:
