How to be more productive thanks to digital detox

In 2020, it’s not too late to add a resolution to your list and change your habits.

Have you ever checked the screen time setting on your phone? I have, and honestly, I was quite surprised and mad at myself for spending so much time scrolling through my phone. We always complain that we lack time, yet spending two hours per day on Instagram or YouTube doesn’t seem to register as a problem. Why are we so obsessed with our phones, is our obsession affecting our productivity, and how can we kick this bad habit?

More generally, it’s tough to picture life without our smartphones. More than a phone, these devices became a means of payment, a personal assistant, a map, a planner, a doctor, a newspaper, a camera, a TV, a music player, or even a parent reminding us to drink more water.

However, this technological improvement encourages a certain dependence, a fatally inevitable phenomenon: it becomes severe, impossible, or even scary to go a day without our phones because we would feel “empty” without them.

This smartphone addiction is comparable to other addictions since it produces the same effects, such as dependence, stress, and anxiety. This phobia mainly affects generation-Z, those born after 1995, also known as the “digital natives.” And now there’s even a term to describe this addiction: nomophobia.

“Nomophobia (no mobile phobia) is a term describing a growing fear in today’s world — the fear of being without a mobile device, or beyond mobile phone contact.”

One of the main reasons for nomophobia is another symptom called FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. Indeed, when they’re not connected, people are scared to miss important news, an important text message, or even posts on their social media feeds. But all that technology, besides feeding our addiction, is making us less productive.

Creativity is a value that we cherish and encourage here at Black Pug Studio.

Smartphones and screens, in general, are making us very passive, and they prevent us from truly engaging in activities that allow our creativity to unfold. This is a real concern nowadays, especially regarding children. We used to invent all kinds of games that engage our imagination as children. Now, a lot of children passively watch screens which is causing a new concern for their early brain development.

In a way, we don’t know how to be bored anymore, we have become used to always needing information, but creativity takes time and a little boredom sometimes.

Most of the applications are designed to distract us and capture our attention. An application designers’ goal is for us to spend a lot of time on their app and to keep coming back. They are created to be so addictive, and as soon as you activate the notifications, you can easily be tempted to check them every 10 minutes. This behavior causes you to lose your focus and results in spending unnecessary hours on a simple task that could have been finished in an hour, given your full attention.

Multitasking is a trap: when you think you’re going faster by achieving multiple tasks, none of them has your full attention. By thinking we achieve more, we do less. Multitasking could even affect your brain: it has been proven that multitaskers were much less mentally organized. A study led by the Harvard Business School showed that among 900 people who were working on a creative project, those who multi-tasked were less creative and felt more stressed.

So when you think you’re saving time by texting while watching your favorite TV show while preparing your work presentation, you’re fooling yourself.

Being hyperconnected can be stressful, especially when it comes to balancing work-life. Some people check their emails on nights and weekends, taking no actual break from work and their responsibilities. Recent studies also showed that social media negatively affects mental health, making you feel envious and unworthy compared to others.

You probably heard of the term “digital detox,” referring to the reduction or limiting of any screen time. The phenomenon was born in the heart of Silicon Valley, where, ironically, the children of Apple and Google executives attend traditional schools and learn to live without a computer or television. In China, they even have internet addiction centers.

Without going this far, here are a few things you can do to reduce your digital use and, therefore, be more productive, mindful, and focused on your projects.

Thanks to these applications, the simple fact of seeing our quantified use can constitute a small shock. Once this awareness has been raised, it is necessary to identify the time-consuming applications and decide if we can reduce our usage.

How many of us check our phones or devices before even fully waking up? Mornings are a chance to start the day in a motivated and purposeful way; by preparing a nice breakfast, writing your to-do list for the day, meditating… even sleeping a bit longer! Most people check their phones first thing in the morning: news, social media or even work e-mails… This habit causes stress and gives us less time to get ready for the day. An obvious but not often adopted tip is to use a proper alarm clock instead of your phone, sometimes analog is best.

Sleeping next to your phone is also bad for your health, since you’re exposed to cell phone radiation and electromagnetic field frequencies all night long.

A quick and easy way to prevent yourself from being distracted all day long is turning off all notifications or keeping them just on a few essential apps. Indeed, knowing that, on average, a smartphone user has between 80 and 100 applications installed on their phone (with 30 commonly used), if we consider that notifications are activated for all, we can quickly have our attention stolen every two minutes.

By disabling push notifications and instead choosing when an app takes your attention, you create the opportunity to check all of your updates at once instead of coming back every 2 minutes on your phone.

5. Go back to more traditional methods

An efficient way to reduce the use of your phone is to make it less essential. For example, use a notebook or a planner instead of managing these aspects of your schedule on your phone, read books on your commute instead of playing Candy Crush, and try to find other activities that give you as much pleasure as surfing your phone.

Knowing all the benefits of digital detox and having all the clues to apply it, you have no more excuse! Being less dependent on your phone will definitely improve your productivity, mental health, creativity, social relationships, and your life in general.

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