Productivity Improvement by 15%

There are countless uses of mobile phone now. And as goes with any use, there are those many avenues for abuse as well. It doesn’t take long for the phone to turn into our master.

I have been working on using my phone less for non-productive reasons. To start with, this is what I did –

1. Zero notifications
2. Uninstalled Whatsapp
3. Never had FB, Instagram, TikTok, Sanpchat, Netflix, kind of apps or any games
4. Intentionally moved to a lower-end phone with lesser RAM. This makes phone unable to heavy lift, thus less attractive and cumbersome to use – and that is an advantage. Digest that for a min.
5. Installed apps to limit the Internet to any apps I may still need occasionally.
6. Moved from Chrome to Brave (for no ads, meaning less avenues for distraction)
7. Disabled Youtube
8. Started keeping my phone on permanent ‘Vibrate’ mode
9. Zero icons on my home screen.

As the next experiment, I disabled/uninstalled all browsers from my phone – Chrome, Edge, Opera. I know that occasionally I may be in need of a browser so I didn’t uninstall Chrome, only disabled it. I enable it when absolutely necessary and then disable it again. Also, even when needed, I try to stick with Brave. 90% time it works.

Keeping the phone on Vibrate helped me a lot too. I am no nuclear scientist and the world will not go upside down if I reply to others’ calls after an hour. I keep my phone in a different direction than where I am focusing and look at it at certain intervals of the day. Plus, people by now know that phones are given the lowest priority so they rather message/mail me. Ironically, in all uses of phones, too many calls are the biggest productivity killer. Management Tip: If you’re managing a team, and use the phone call way too much to get the status from your team, you may think that it is convenient for you to just pick up the phone and get that ‘status’, but it is doing no good to the productivity of your team, so use this option wisely. Plus, it also portrays that you are not able to plan things in advance.

On average, every 10 days I had to enable my browser a total of 6 times. I prefer doing all work-related stuff on my laptop/desktop anyways.

Whatsapp was a challenge also because so many people use it and my extended family was asking me to have it so they can share pictures easily. I did install it again, but with zero notifications I am able to control how I use it.

With Zero Icons on my home screen, I use my phone for exactly what I intend it to rather than get enticed into checking that one extra app whose icon looks so appealing.

If I needed some app for a certain reason, I install it, use it and uninstall it. Sounds cumbersome but this little extra effort that you need to put in saves you unnecessary usage of the app. Case in point – Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, and the likes.

I tracked my productivity in various ways – time spent, output, quality of output, and my focus level. These are subjective personal assessments but I tried to be as prudent as possible without diminishing or exaggerating anything. I saw a 15% improvement (a conservative figure, I believe in reality it is more) in my productivity just by lowering my use of phone.

In the process, I also came across amazing apps that I installed and use regularly now. That one for another day though.

This is what I learned –

1. We think that we need the browsers for some important thing but that important stuff happens less than 5% of the time. The remaining usage of the browser is all non-productive – news surfing, articles, youtube, etc.
2. Notifications are the worst ones. A little ding here, a little there seems harmless but it kills concentration & focus. Keep them ON only for absolutely essential apps. Frankly, I didn’t have any such essential apps in my list so I have zero notifications.
3. News surfing is the most unproductive thing. We tell our mind that it is very important to know ‘what’s happening in the world’. And in the process of knowing that 1 important thing, we fill up our mind with garbage like what Tom Cruise wore for a party or How Kareena’s sun-kissed vacation selfie is the best thing you will see on the internet today (really?). Additionally, this knowledge becomes redundant every few hours so you are always in this constant lookout for the next breaking news.
4. Removing unnecessary apps saved me tons of time, and a little bit of money too.

Time is the most valuable resource anyone of us have and we don’t even know how much of it do we have. Guard your time more fiercely than how to guard your money. Use the time currency on what is really important because before you realize it, it will be gone. One Life. Live Boundless.

Read, Productivity++

One Life. Live Boundless.