Regain Your Productivity: How To Keep Your Phone From Distracting You

In today’s world, it’s impossible to walk down a street, across a college campus, or through a store without seeing people constantly looking at their smartphones. While cellphones have been one of the great technological breakthroughs of our time, they have also become quite distracting. Unfortunately if you are a student who needs to finish homework or study for a test, it is much more fun to push your notes aside, grab your phone, and get lost on social media. However, if you’ve decided enough is enough and you’re ready to regain your productivity, here are some easy ways to keep your phone from becoming a distraction.

Get Rid of Some Apps

If you’re like most people, you have an endless array of apps downloaded on your phone. While this sounds great, it can be a huge distraction. Chances are you only use a few on a regular basis, while most others are used little if any. However, that doesn’t stop you from trying them out now and then, or even downloading more apps you likely won’t use. Therefore, take a few minutes and delete the apps you don’t need.

Limit Your Phone Time

As more and more people find themselves getting distracted by their phones, they are setting limits for themselves as to how much time per day they spend on their phones. For example, if you are obsessed with TikTok but find it’s getting in the way of your studies and other obligations, limit yourself to 30 minutes per day. While it may be hard at first, you’ll soon find you’re getting much more done each day.

Disable Notifications

If you’ve downloaded apps for news sites, social media, email, and other vital things, you no doubt get one notification after another throughout the course of your day. As a result, you are always picking up your phone to find out what’s happening. However, every time you pick up your phone, you’re losing valuable time that could and should be spent doing other things that are far more important, such as studying. To keep this from occurring, disable notifications for any apps you consider to be “non-critical.” For example, while you could safely disable a notification for an entertainment site, you should probably not do so for a weather site that provides severe weather updates.

Put Your Phone Out of Reach

If you have the willpower to do so and want to make the ultimate sacrifice, put your phone physically out of reach. Remember, your phone can’t distract you if you cannot see it, hear it, or touch it. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to remove the phone from the area where you spend most of your time studying. By putting your phone in another room while it is charging up, you won’t be tempted to keep glancing at it every few minutes.

Backpack, Not Pocket

When you’re walking around campus or elsewhere, you may want to place your phone in your backpack rather than keeping it in your pocket. Not only will this keep you from being able to reach into your pocket and easily grab your phone, but it will also let you stay focused on the task at hand. After all, if you’re on your way to take an important test, it’s best if you keep your mind on what you studied, rather than the latest posts from your friends on social media.

Once you take the plunge and commit to making your phone less of a distraction, you’ll soon find your productivity will be reaching levels you thought were lost forever.