Your Phone Is A Distraction Only If You Want It To Be

“Screen Time” Feature From Apple

Since Apple launched the “Screen Time” feature in 2018 iOS software update, I was interested in only one application: compare my weekly screen-time trends. Every Sunday a notification pops up that reads “your screen time was up/down x% in the previous week”.

In college, it didn’t matter because after entering the pre-final year (the year 2017, before the feature was launched) most of the students (including me) toiled every day in prepping for the ideal after-college life we had in mind, i.e., getting a job. I said “had” because the picture changes with time as you realise while living the “ideal” life how less exciting it is. This is a solid perspective I am hearing from everyone.

Time To Experiment With Phone For Productivity

While in the job, I realised how much my phone was interfering with productive time and how easily I give in to the temptation to check it whenever I thought of taking even the slightest detour. The detour was just an understatement back then. Hours of social media engagement does no good if you are using it as a break from work pressure. It is not just a “break”, it is exhausting on top of that pressure. The brain is also drained from social media scrolling and it is a strain for eyes too.

I have experimented with my phone to make it a productivity tool instead of a distraction. Although I use an iPhone, these practices apply to Android users also as they all end up talking about eliminating clutter from your phone to use it for efficient task management.

Customise Notifications

We love apps. They save us the trouble of launching the browser and entering our login credentials every time. They even have an engaging user interface, I get it. But when almost every app floods your notifications centre with its update, gleaning the right information becomes more of a quest. Perhaps you might realize later that you have missed any important information. Or even if the information was worth missing, the overloaded notification centre is a source of anxiety just like watching excess news nowadays. I have rarely seen any friend with a clean notification centre, everyone’s is stacked with pop-ups they don’t even know what to do with them.

Limiting only important apps for notifications helps here. Allowing only those apps to inform you which help in maintaining your schedule, instead of disturbing it. I receive notifications only for these 3 apps: email, reminders and Whatsapp. And that also when my phone is unlocked. No notifications in the lock screen. I don’t need Instagram to tell me that someone mentioned me in a comment. I know to check it during leisure time.

Declutter The Home Screen

Your brain remembers what you see repeatedly. If Facebook is in the first screen after unlocking your phone, chances are you will end up using it more than you are supposed to. Moving such apps to a secondary screen helps a lot. You won’t swipe frequently to open it. And even you do, you know to organise in such way that the effort to open won’t feel worth it.

When you unlock your phone, you should see important apps or no apps at all. If you see above, my home screen is blank. I have all my apps on the next screen inside a single folder. All the important ones are in the dock. I wish I could remove those 2 red annoying circles from Settings also. But the iPhone does not have that level of customisation.

Whenever I need to open any app, I just type in the first few letters and based on my activity Siri knows which apps to suggest. These are my most frequently used apps today.

Be Selective With Social Media

Why is there a need to put the same story on all the social network? You resonated with great thought and you want everyone to know about how much it psyched you. You share it on every platform that has stories: Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat. Wait for it, Twitter is also testing its own stories feature called “Fleets”.

Unless you are a social media manager at some organisation, posting updates on every platform will just keep you busy with social media a lot. You will see the viewers update on every network, although more than 50% audience will overlap across. Pick the network you are most comfortable with sharing status based on the audience and your content. Good with photos, break Instagram. Good with words, document your experiences on Medium. Ads-free network and privacy come first? Share on Whatsapp.

My go-to social networks are Instagram and Medium. Whenever I want to hold myself accountable publicly for a task I want to accomplish, I share it on Instagram the first thing. Nowadays my activity on Medium is also increasing. These are the two social networks that keep me on track and I have my life journey on both of them. Instagram for a visual version and Medium for the collection of thoughts in words. It is so pleasing every time I say, “thoughts in words”.

They Help With Habit Development Too

Reminders. The simplest yet the most under-rated apps used by most people I have seen. Nowadays reminders are so customisable, you can set recurring ones and forget the idea of maintaining a pen-paper task planner.

I use reminders for habit development too. As I mentioned my method of maintaining consistency through The Seinfeld Strategy, I have added my calendar in this blog where I check off every day I finish a set of predetermined tasks. But that is just a ritual I follow before sleeping every night to update myself consistently. It is a part of even a bigger system. I use reminders to assist me to stay on track every day.

I brainstormed how to use them effectively. I have reminders all day long, starting 4:30 AM till 9:30 PM. You must be thinking: “How does a person manage so much scattered reminders throughout the day”. The catch is, they are not scattered. They are scheduled in groups to appear at specific times. Like all the morning reminders come at 4 AM. The same grouping is for the rest of the day. My reminders are broadly categorised into three categories: morning, work and evening. Reminders are scheduled to appear at specific times. As I keep adopting them as habits I purge my schedule at the start of every month and add new reminders to track new habits.

Block An Off-Time Every Day

There are two times where I avoid screen-time for long term maintenance. Before 1 hour of sleep onset and within one hour of waking up, I don’t use my phone. Even if I do use it, it is mostly for reading on Medium. And now that I have Kindle, I reach for the phone less often. Because seeing the notifications first thing in the morning increases cortisol levels (the stress hormone) just after waking up while seeing it just before bedtime makes it harder to sleep. The stress hormone is the reason both times.

These all methods work when you practice it, say for at least one week, and see the improvement in your time management. Then you can judge for yourself which method comes easiest for you. Who knows you might come up with your unique way to use your phone as productivity wizard? Experiment with that device. It is not a door to the internet, it has a lot to improve your lifestyle.

My 21-day writing streak is finished and this is the 22nd article in the streak. This is the one that started the best streak of 2020 so far. The next target is 100. I will add a list below which will be updated as I publish till day 100. It will have 78 (100 minuses 21 minus this current one = 78) articles on day100. That is an achievable dream with eyes open. 💡