Jared Benson

“Sorry, I Gotta Take This…”

This iPhone tip goes out to those of you following the growing “Life Hacks” movement - gaining back precious minutes of your life through efficiency practices.

We’ve all been stuck in meetings that we wish we could get out of. Well, fortunately His Steveness has designed something handy into the iPhone which will help us reclaim our lives so we can get back to doing what we _really_ want to be doing. If you have the foresight, try this before attending your next meeting:From the main menu, select Clock then Timer. Use the wheel interface to set your interval (How much of this meeting are you willing to endure?), set your ringtone and hit “Start.”

Attend your meeting. Go ahead and shut your phone down (read as: Hit the hardware button on top right) and set it on the table next to your notebook, printouts, etc. and act as interested as you can in the meeting. Resist the urge to check the timer - don’t worry, it won’t let you down. When the timer reaches zero, it will wake up your iPhone and play the ringtone. To anyone glancing over at your iPhone, the combination of idle screen wallpaper and ringtone will look convincing, even to a fellow iPhone user.

Grab it shortly into the first ring, give it a quick glance, and apologize to those left in the room.. “Sorry, I gotta take this…”

4 Responses to ““Sorry, I Gotta Take This…””

  1. Andrew Crowon 03 Jul 2007 at 12:10 am

    You have just screwed yourself out of leaving any future meeting. Your co-workers will totally know!

    Good tip, though. I can also see this coming in handy on first dates! Just set it for an hour and get that call from your sick friend when you need it.

  2. Joe Pembertonon 06 Jul 2007 at 7:10 pm

    As long as we’re revealing secrets…

    Is it bad to admit that I’ve done this during a bad haircut? I excused myself 5 minutes into the haircut to take a phone call from a phone on silent that happens to be in my pocket.

  3. Sheldon Kotykon 04 Sep 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Or you can leave the meeting without interrupting those who want to be in the meeting by setting it on silent or vibrate and looking concerned when you see who called.

  4. williamon 10 Oct 2007 at 10:51 am

    Nice tip! I hadn’t thought of this. You could also just set an alarm and set it to a ring tone. I actually use my iPhone as my alarm clock so I know that works too

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