Are you someone who gets distracted by their phone – like, by a lot? You’re not alone; on average, Americans check their phones 96 times a day, and if you’re a working adult, the bulk of that is going to be during your shift. Some people feel glued to their phone screen, and this can be for a variety of reasons, but the most insidious of those is all about the ‘productivity’ factor.
After all, how can you be wasting screen time if you’re working? If you’re someone who uses their smartphone in order to accomplish tasks and stay in touch with those you work with, you’re obviously going to need to have your phone in hand all day… Right?
Well, there’s a good chance you could cut back by half and still get the same results out of a day. Indeed, you could probably get a lot more done if you had the chance to break away, and be in the moment with other devices, people, and working methods.
But how do you start to dial back on your phone usage? Thankfully, iPhones come built with all kinds of innate security and peace of mind features that you ought to start putting to good use, no matter your relative tech ability level. You can make your iPhone work for you, rather than the other way around, and it’s going to push your working routine and the quality of your results through the roof!
Prevent Your Phone Pinging Every 5 Seconds
This really is the long and short of it – if your phone is going off, it’s a distraction, and that’s not good for your work schedule or your current headspace. So, how many times does your phone light up or vibrate or ping with a notification? And every time it does, how do you react? Do you pause everything to check what’s come through, or do you just glance over to see who’s in touch? Because doing either of these things can cause your workday to seriously drag, especially if you get caught up in something that probably could have been left until later.
So, you’re going to need to keep your phone from going off regularly. You want to get on with your work, and make sure you’re in the moment and completely focused, which means that spike of anxious arousal whenever a notification comes through needs to be beaten! And that means it’s time to dig into your phone’s settings.
Simply enough, using ‘Do Not Disturb’ on a daily basis is going to stop all but the most imperative messages from coming through. However, you can go deeper than this, and start using ‘Content Restrictions’ as well. To do this, you’ll just need to find the ‘Screen Time’ option in your phone, and then set some restrictions on how long you’re allowed to use certain apps.
You may also be able to set some restrictions on what websites you can visit via the phone’s browser as well, so you may want to look into this, depending on the iOS and/or iPhone model you’re using. Once you set them, you won’t be able to get past these content locks, and that might be what you need.
Read Up on Productivity Hacks
Productivity is the number one thing we as workers want out of our time. We want to know that our efforts are going as far as possible, and that we’re doing as much as we can to get the results we want out of the business we’ve built from the ground up. However, while you might use the iPhone in your pocket to always have your finger on the button, are you actually just wasting the majority of your time here?
Even just spending some time trying to better yourself, or your time using a phone, is a worthy alternate pursuit. For example, if you’re a freelance photographer who uses their phone a lot throughout your work, looking up and subscribing to a good iPhone photography blog or two could open up your profession a lot more. All in all, simply put your phone to better use, instead of letting it be the time sink it is now.
So, as it turns out, your iPhone may be hampering you at work. But how do you realize this, and then go about changing things? Start with the above tips, settle into a new working groove using them, and then see just how things can change for you.