It has been difficult for “non-techy” folks (the vast majority of us) to wrap our heads around what Progressive Web Apps are, and how they can benefit our businesses and organizations.
The Answer Is Simple… A PWA (Progressive Web App) is a new web technology that combines the best a website has to offer with the best a mobile app has to offer. The result: Easy customer access that can increase business instantly for any local business!
The chances are you have been using Progressive Web Apps daily, without even knowing it. It is the next major progression to MOBILE browsing that every website owner should explore because the benefits are enormous!
PWAs completely change how a website visitor is engaged and communicated with. When a website visitor lands on your Progressive Web App, there’s a request asking permission to add the site to their home screen. Once the user clicks to add, the fully functioning website is added to their home screen and you can send communications via push notifications directly to the device the app was added to!
You will have a working PWA for ANY business or organization that is secure, built Mobile-First, and ready to BOOST RESULTS in a matter of MINUTES! See more details here..
The writer Annie Dillard says, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Yet, we let our weeks happen to us instead of proactively designing our time. We don’t block off our calendars to do heads-down, focused work. We participate in meetings without clear agendas or purposes.
We work without a plan. We let the constant barrage of notifications distract us. We convince ourselves that our busy work is our most important work, even when we know better. The fundamental building block of a workweek is how each individual spends their time. But surprisingly, little attention is dedicated to how we design our hours and workweeks.
For example, when do you do your best work? How many meetings should you schedule on your calendar? Do you allow notifications and respond immediately, or do you turn notifications off to work uninterrupted?
Here are four steps to design your week
Conduct a self-audit to understand your time
Put everything you do on your calendar for two weeks, from meetings and time blocks for emails to special projects and preparing for upcoming meetings; then conduct a time audit by reflecting on the data.
What do you notice about how you spent your time?
What percentage of your time is dedicated to each project? To meetings?
What days of the week are you most focused?
What time of day are you most energized?
Use the insights from your audit to take the following steps:
Identify small changes: Making small improvements can add up to big differences. What are the simplest, easiest steps you can take to proactively design your workweek? For me, it was blocking off my calendar to do heads-down deep work time 3-4 times per week and turning off notifications.
Identify significant changes: Making big structural changes to your week can also lead to more time for the most important work. When I completed my self-audit, I realized that there were weekly standing meetings that could either get canceled or that I didn’t need to attend.
16 minutes: Time it takes to refocus after an incoming email
10: How many IQ points you lose when fielding constant emails (the same as losing an entire night’s sleep)
56: The number of times we’re interrupted per day
3 minutes: Spent working before switching between tasks
2 hours: Spent recovering from distractions every day
Here are a few steps to reduce the time lost to distractions:
Email: Turn off email notifications and set aside 2-3 blocks of time to check and respond to emails throughout the day. Then, ignore email for the rest of the day, knowing that you have time allocated to get to it.
Notifications: Turn off all notifications (email, internal team notifications) for certain “deep work zones” scheduled throughout the week. I blocked off two deep work zones each week where I could work uninterrupted.
Create goal-based calendar blocks: I often create 30 or 60-minute calendar blocks where I challenge myself to complete a specific task or reach a particular goal. Like the pomodoro technique, using time constraints to reach a predetermined goal can increase your focus and empower you to tune out distractions.
Finally, consider what you gain when you reduce distractions (time with your children, ability to go to the gym after work, work-free weekends, etc.).
Create boundaries to maximize your time
Boundaries are a crucial step in reducing distractions, burnout, and work stress. With 79% of employees reporting work-related stress in 2021, we need to take personal ownership and reclaim our time.
Boundaries can be hard to create, but consider using the results from your self-audit to help you determine what boundaries will be most valuable. For example, is it protecting your time? Limiting new, additional tasks? Blocking certain times of day for important work while you’re at your best? Avoiding company events that aren’t required?
When communicating your boundaries with others, focus on the benefit they create for the task at hand.
When your availability is limited:
“I prioritize time with my family on X day or after Y time, but I’m fully available [list commonly available times]. How can we leverage that availability to reach our deadline?”
When the project isn’t in line with your priorities:
“I am working on several projects right now and want to ensure I’m effective. Given that our quarterly goals are [insert goals/metrics/objectives], it seems like Y project and Z project are less essential and timely than x project. Is this right? How do you propose I best prioritize?
Test, Optimize, and Repeat to sustain your time
Start with designing just one workday. How might you proactively structure a workday that has a high chance of being focused, productive, and healthy? Make 2-3 small changes across notifications, deep-work time, emails, and boundary-setting. Then at the end of the day, review what you learned. What worked? What didn’t? Then try again for another day. Double down on 1-2 practices you already implemented and select 1-2 more to test.
If you find it harder to make changes daily, consider looking at a whole week and focusing on identifying 2-3 small changes you can make weekly. Then at the end of the week, reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and try again for the following week.
It can often feel like our calendar is predetermined for us; we just need to respond and make the best of it, striving to fit everything in. But we have more power than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. One of the best ways to find more time in our schedule is to recognize the agency within us and begin by taking a few small steps.
A new report claims a brilliant new feature could be coming to the iPhone 14 Pro, powered by the software that’s about to be revealed.
Apple’s next big iPhone software release, iOS 16, will be unveiled at Apple’s upcoming special event, the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The keynote will be a pre-recorded event but with an in-person contingent: streamed to a small group of developers in Cupertino and simultaneously to the rest of the world. It could include Apple’s biggest new product category reveal in almost eight years.
Even if that doesn’t happen, for sure there will be the first looks at Apple’s software platforms: iOS for iPhone, iPadOS for iPad, macOS for Apple Macs, tvOS for Apple TV and watchOS for Apple Watch.
Now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, in his latest Power On newsletter, has news about what iOS 16 contains. While most of the innovations are software-only, at least one indicates something that may be locked to the iPhone 14 series, or parts of it, alone.
Always-on screen
This is a feature the iPhone has never had, though plenty of Android phones have. Still, Apple’s mantra seems to be “Don’t do it first, do it right”.
The best always-on screens show the time, what notifications await, if there’s an alarm set and so on. You can configure them to show exactly what you want including, in the case of the excellent Huawei screens, a cute animation. It means you can glance down at the iPhone and see the time, even without touching it. All without killing the battery.
Gurman claims that this new feature, assuming it makes the cut, will be reserved for Apple iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, that is, the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max, if that’s what the other two phones are called, won’t have it.
It’s a feature that’s been in the planning for a long time because according to Gurman it’s: “something Apple was originally planning for last year’s iPhone 13. This would allow the iPhone to turn down the frame rate significantly on the lock screen and display quickly glanceable information—similar to newer Apple Watches.” If it happens, it’s a big deal.
Also in iOS 16
Gurman also claims that there will be an extensive series of changes across the OS, including, “updates to notifications, iPad multitasking, and the Messages and Health apps. The makeover also includes a part of the interface that’s often an afterthought: the lock screen.”
He rightly points out that the most used lock-screen feature is likely the flashlight button—if your usage is anything like mine, that is.
New “wallpapers that have widget-like capabilities” are predicted. There are no more details from Gurman about this, but it sounds exciting and suggests a more innovative and more useful lock screen.
The next iPhone software is predicted to see an improved Messages app with “more social network-like functionality, particularly around audio messages.”
Messages already has a bunch of cool features like the ability to add confetti or balloons to texts and the fact that the advanced stuff is only available between Apple users adds to the exclusivity and helps stop a wholesale move to the multi-platform WhatsApp, perhaps.
New features are expected for the Health app on the iPhone, and while Gurman says there will be “plenty” of them. There are no more details yet.More details as we have them, but not long until it’s all revealed.
Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro is set to be the phone that could shake up the iPhone range by potentially bringing in a notably different design from the iPhone 13 Pro. So far the rumors have hinted at everything from the death of the notch to the return of Touch ID.
This is probably well overdue; as good as the iPhone 13 Pro is, it’s arguably not a definitive upgrade over its predecessor. And overall, the iPhone hasn’t taken a huge leap forward since the iPhone 11 Pro.
Naturally, Apple is extremely tight-lipped about any information concerning its next iPhones, especially when it comes to release dates and price. But going by previous launches, we’d say it’s a safe bet to expect the iPhone 14 range to debut in September. The most recent leak has the iPhone 14 launch tipped for September 13, supposedly based on insider information. That date seems to track with other rumors and Apple’s general cadence of iPhone launches.
This relatively significant leap in launch price would certainly sting the wallet of anyone hoping to score a high-end next-gen iPhone 14. Another leaker, Shadow_Leak, has posted on Twitter that he also expects the regular iPhone 14 Pro to cost $1,099 (opens in new tab). Do also check out our early look at the iPhone 14 vs iPhone 14 Pro — get ready for the biggest differences in years.
It has been difficult for “non-techy” folks (the vast majority of us) to wrap our heads around what Progressive Web Apps are, and how they can benefit our businesses and organizations.
