As the technological world continues to grow, as more people board public transportation, as the workplace becomes increasingly electronic, and as mechanic production increases, smartphones become an important means for a range of activities including communication, transportation, workplace involvement, and entertainment.
In this day and age, when using a smartphone is no longer a privilege but rather a common accessibility, these devices can change the course of our lives in terms of information, leisure, and productivity.
The Struggle With Smartphones
With our smartphones, it becomes much easier to communicate through texts, emails, and social media platforms. We can access documents and music, and more through offline data connections. The power of smartphones to increase our productivity inevitably suggests our abilities to develop but there also grows an underlying risk as smartphones become increasingly prevalent in our society.
While smartphones can help one’s productivity, smartphones are also a source of distraction, addition, and interference with one’s work. It becomes so easy to be unproductive when the choice to open Netflix, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Subway Surfers, Facebook, or another form of entertainment triumphs over Gmail, Slack, Google Docs, and texting a co-worker back. Smartphones are designed for portability, productivity, but also entertainment and often, we allow that last usage to interfere with our workplace activities.
Smartphone Hacks for Focusing at Work
Without further ado, here are some smart ways to change your smartphone usage and make a smarter use of your time.
1. Download and Use Forest
There are often times when you really need to open your laptop or sort through papers as you complete a long assignment or require time away from your phone. This smartphone app is extremely helpful for maintaining off-the-phone productivity while doing so for a good cause. Before starting your time away from your phone, you may plant a tree in the app with a certain time limit. To avoid causing a withering tree to grow in your forest, it then becomes the objective to remain off your phone and stay in the Forest application on the timer screen for the rest of the time until the tree has grown. With an added incentive, it becomes easier to avoid procrastination and view the satisfying array of trees in your forest. Each planted tree produces coins which can be used to purchase other types of trees or even plant a real tree, completed by an organization called Trees for the Future. The app is available in both the Google Play Store and the App Store.
2. Reorganize and Clean your Smartphone.
Smartphones can be dirty on the inside, and the outside. We carry them everywhere and clean them a lot less than we should. All our apps might be everywhere, with thousands of unread emails or hundreds of unread notifications and advertisements scattering the screen. To work better, declutter. Touching our dirty phones and looking at our cluttered home screens opens a way for us to pick up diseases and stress, which ultimately, decreases productivity. To clean your phone, use wipes or a microfiber cloth with cleaning spray. To organize your screen, create folders or separate into sections. Delete unused applications and mute unimportant notifications.
3. Move (or Remove) Games and Social Apps
Delete or change the location of time-consuming games or forms of social media. For example, if you spend six hours a day on Instagram, you can delete the app or deliberately move it to a location harder to access on your phone. Rather than instinctively clicking on something which limits your productivity, you are less likely to spend unnecessary time on an application when it becomes harder for you to access it.
4. Set Usage Goals and Time Limits
Using the Screen Time features on recent smartphones, set goals for how much time you plan to use on specific applications or overall phone usage. Limitations can also be physically set for time spent on certain apps and based on data which your smartphone connects, you can truly get a sense of how much time you’re spending as unproductive on your device.
5. Highlight Work Apps
Make applications designed for work easy to access and place them on the first page of your home screen. Oftentimes, smartphones make your work more portable. If your job requires extensive writing, you may do so in your smartphone notes or in a Google Document. If your job requires extensive communication, you can check your email or messages on Slack while on your phone. If your job involves editing images or designing artwork, this can also be done through smartphone photo editing softwares.
When you eliminate distractions and allow yourself to do work, when you adapt some of these helpful tricks, you will indefinitely become more productive with your smartphone.
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