Been Productive is something that most of us aspire to be but find it difficult when we are constantly connected to our smart devices more so our Phones. I am personally someone who struggles with distractions and my phone is certainly the biggest one which prevents me from often achieving the things on my to-do list on a daily basis.
So how can we organise our phones to aid productivity rather than hinder it? In this post, I am going to look at 5 things that you can implement to help you stop reaching for your phone when you need to be fully focused on the task at hand.
So let’s dive into these 5 tips on how to organise and use your phone to be more productive.
1. Declutter Your Home Screen:
You may think how is this going to help me be more productive? Well, your home screen is the first thing you see when you unlock your phone and is likely to have your most used and favourite app there. This can lead to you going to your phone to look at one thing but then opening your social media apps and before you know it you have been scrolling for 30 minutes rather than finishing the task that you should have been.
Remove distracting apps from your home screen:
Look at the apps that are consuming most of your time and ask yourself if they are helping or hindering your productivity. If they are then remove them, you don’t need to delete just remove them so they end up in your App Library. This means that you have added some resistance and you have to search for that app now to use it.
2. Use Silent Mode:
This might be obvious but when I say silent mode I mean without the vibrate option on. I find that if I still have my phone on vibrate I will still know when a notification has hit my phone and will inevitably pick my phone up to see what notification has come through. So by turning off the sound and vibrate mode, you won’t know and I would also recommend turning your phone side down and then you can’t see either.
3. Reduce your Notifications:
Another option to reduce distractions is to reduce the number of Notifications that you are getting so that you are only getting the really important ones. This is easy to do by simply going into your notifications setting on your phone looking through which ones you need and ones you don’t and simply toggling them off.
4. Use Focus Modes:
Focus Modes are a great way to set up your phone to help you to more productive. If I take the iPhone as an example you can set up multiple focus modes to suit your situation and as well as that you can also customise your home screen for each focus mode.
This can be helpful as you can have different modes for when you are working. This means that you can choose what notifications you will receive whilst in that mode, which might be none. The great thing about being able to have a different home screen set up is that you can also choose what apps you want access to in that mode.
5. Use Folders to Categorise Your Apps:
This is a great way to tidy up your Home Screen and have a minimal look. You can create categories so you can group your app say for Productivity App and Social Media. Having folders means that you know where each of your apps are and can avoid the need to scroll through an app library/drawer to find what you want and potentially getting distracted by another app along the way.
Final Thoughts:
Your phone can be a distraction but it doesn’t need to be it can also be something that helps you to be more productive. It all depends on how you choose to use it as well as how you choose to set it up. Hopefully some of the above can help you set your phone in a way that’s going to help you set yourself up for success.