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Update: the Workflow actions that make the iPhone dumb have been updated to take advantage of new features available in Workflow. Learn more.

I, like many, have a tendency to bury myself in my smartphone. Endless streams of entertainment and work, Twitter, email, RSS, random browsing. While this is great when there is nothing to do and no one visiting from out of town, but not exactly the behavior I want when I have a chance to visit with family who I only see for a few days every other year.

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I won’t lie. My addiction is bad. Verging on terrible, so how am I working around it this year? By making my smartphone a dumb smartphone.

I have removed Twitter and other “endless” apps, ones that always have new content just a pull-to-refresh away. So long Tweetbot and NYT Now.

Almost everything I use an app for is accessible via the browser, so while I may not have access to a service from an preferred app, I could always waste my time with loved ones starring at Safari.

Enter iOS Restrictions. Disabling Safari in iOS settings is enough of a roadblock that I’m not going to want to undo it regularly, and I’m really trying to be present this holiday.

Here is the problem: What do I do when I want to look up something, like when is the local model train store open, or what is the address off the closes motorcycle dealer? These are things I am going to do with my loved ones, so they are relevant to what we are doing, so should be fair game for me looking up.

Rather than re-enabling Safari, I have created two Workflow workflows.

1. The first action accepts a search term and then, after removing spaces, appends the search term to the DuckDuckGo search URL, before opening the Sharing menu.
2. The other action accepts a URL on the clipboard and opens the Sharing menu.

Why the Sharing Menu?

Why the Sharing menu? Because I have installed Sidefari on my phone. It sits as an action extension, allowing me to open URLs without having to have Safari enabled. It also locks the URL field to the search URL or the address from my clipboard, which means I can’t fall down the rat hole of the open internet.

Why the clipboard workflow? Links that show up in email and Instapaper articles don’t work with Safari disabled, so I can copy the URL and launch the clipboard workflow.

To make it a little easier, I have created a Launch Center Pro action for each, putting each of them with in easy reach. Why not add them to the home screen? I can’t, because Safari is disabled, and they wouldn’t work, because Safari is disabled.

Is it convoluted? Yes. Is it meant to be? Yes. And I enjoying my time. Yes. Am I less distracted. Definitely.

In the past few weeks, I have seen numerous people citing that the average American watches something like 5 hours of TV a day. 5 hours seems really high and the 2013 Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that the average America really watches about 2.8 hours of TV. That is still a crazy number. Particularly now that summer has started and the kids are out of school, I am planning my TV time like I would plan a trip to the movies. Let me explain.

In the morning, there is no TV. Between walking the dog, going to the gym to coach or workout, eating breakfast and getting ready for work, I don’t have a minute of time to stare at the TV. Sure, my kids might have it on for an episode of My Little Pony or Phineas and Ferb, but I’m not watching it.

During the work day, I don’t watch TV because I’m working.

After work, I am either coaching again, going to cheer my kids on at a swim meet or helping prepare dinner, so no TV then. After we eat and get the kids ready for bed, with baths and stories, I might sit down on the couch at 8:30 at night. My bed time, to ensure that I can do the same routine the next day is 9, so that leaves me enough time for a 20ish minute show. If I want to watch something longer, I have to treat it like a trip to the movies. Make sure the kids are tucked in bed and be ready for a late night.

I was talking this fact over with my wife and she found an interesting fact which might contribute to our viewing extended TV watching as a movie. We do not watch live TV. We cut the cord (or would if Verizon didn’t make their bundle so weird that is financially stupid to just have internet). No broadcast TV, just Netflix, HBO Now and iTunes TV and movies. Because the content we want is on demand, we don’t have to schedule time to catch our show. With a DVR, we could time shift it, but our current setup is that without the warnings about the DVR getting full, or the guilt of seeing a massive list of shows to watch.
This is not to brag about how little TV I watch, or how busy my days are, just to comment on how much time can be “wasted”. Is there really 3 hours of television I want to watch every night of the week? Watching a show that you really like is different from just watching TV to watch.