Your Phone and Productivity

Have you ever picked up your phone to check one message and suddenly realized that 30 minutes have disappeared? You’re not alone. Our phones are designed to grab our undivided attention, and while they’re powerful tools, they can also be one of the biggest productivity killers. Smartphone use has become a form of addiction, with negative impacts on mental and physical well-being. Today, I want to share how and why your phone impacts your productivity and how to make your phone work for you instead of against you.

We touch our phones approximately 2,600 (!) times per day and spend an average of 3 hours daily on them, which adds up to a shocking 46 days per year. 67% of people experience nomophobia—an intense fear of being without their phones—and 71% of people sleep with their phones next to them.

How Phones Impair Cognitive Performance

The mere presence of a cell phone can reduce your ability to focus on challenging tasks. Studies show that participants perform worse on cognitively demanding activities when a phone is nearby, even if they aren’t using it. This distraction isn’t just in your head—frequent phone users report more issues with executive functioning, such as focus, planning, and self-control. This is concerning because mental effort isn’t infinite—it’s a resource that can be depleted. The more energy your brain spends managing distractions, the less capacity it has for critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. Over time, this constant mental strain can lead to mental fatigue, reduced productivity, and even burnout. Essentially, frequent distractions from phone use force the brain to work harder than it should, leaving you drained and less effective in other areas of life.

Additionally, phone interruptions delay task completion by up to four times and strain the brain's right prefrontal cortex, which manages mental effort and attention control. Over time, this constant strain can lead to mental fatigue, reduced productivity, and even burnout

Frequent phone users struggle to switch between tasks effectively and often experience attention failures, such as forgetting what they were doing mid-task. These users also tend to be more impulsive, have split visual attention, and perform worse on working memory tests.

One of the most well-established connections is between smartphone use and anxiety. This has been demonstrated in multiple studies and detailed in books like The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Heidt. If you want to dive deeper into this topic, his work provides a comprehensive explanation.

And while a phone is a valuable tool when we want to stay in touch with friends and family, for the most part, we are not using it to text or call. Most of the time on the phone is spent on the apps: social media, shopping, entertainment, and dating apps monopolize our attention every day. What’s more concerning, the most used and downloaded apps of 2024 are social media apps: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. What is even more concerning is that 3 out of the top 4 apps - Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp - are owned by the same Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook.

Two key concepts explain this addiction: platform decay and the variable schedule of reinforcement. Platform decay is a term used to describe gradual decline in quality of online products and services over time. Often algorithms used by the big tech prioritize engagement over quality so the more time you spend on the platform, the lesser quality of content you will get.

So, if the content is getting worse, why are we still doom-scrolling? That’s when a variable schedule of reinforcement comes in – we become hooked because of the unpredictability of rewards. A variable schedule of reinforcement means that rewards—such as interesting reels or likes—are delivered inconsistently and at random intervals. This randomness keeps us scrolling, hoping that the next post will give us the dopamine boost we crave so much. This combination of declining content quality and unpredictable rewards creates a cycle that is hard to break, keeping us glued to our screens even when we know it's not the best use of our time.

Strategies to Improve Productivity

Remove the main trigger – your phone. When you need to focus and do deep work, put your phone in a different room or somewhere where you can’t see it, as far away from your desk as possible. Do not rely on your willpower to simply ignore the notifications, because we both know that won’t happen. Note that turning on a silent mode yet keeping your phone on your desk will not work. As I discussed earlier, having your phone next to you impairs your cognitive capacity, so just put it away for a couple of hours.

Turn off all non-essential notifications, especially for social media apps and put your phone on the Do not Disturb mode while working. Do you really need to know the second someone likes your photo on Instagram or comments on a Facebook post? Not really. And although these notifications are relevant, social media apps will often send you irrelevant notifications, just to keep you scrolling such as “Here’s a reel you might like” but each time I clicked, I saw some of the most boring, low-quality videos in the universe. So please don’t fall for that and mute all the unnecessary alerts. I am not saying you should stop checking your phone altogether, not at all – I check my phone a couple of hours during a workday, but it is on the Do Not Disturb mode until I finish work.

Set screen time limits for the apps that consume most of your time. Tools like Screen Time on iPhones or Digital Wellbeing on Androids are great for this. You might be surprised at how much time you’re actually spending on these apps—and cutting back even a little can make a huge difference. A note on the time limit – some apps let you bypass the time limit within the app. For example, Instagram gives you an option to “Ignore limit for today”. If you find yourself continuously scrolling even after you’ve reached the limit, you can simply delete or offload the app and redownload it later in the week.

Rewire the habit loop. When you feel the urge to scroll, redirect it to something productive like reading a book or newspaper or journaling. If you want to open TikTok to self-distract, you might as well open a Wall Street Journal app or any other quality news platform… and learn something new and useful. Or go take a walk around the block – some sunlight and physical movement will give you more satisfaction than watching someone’s latest Amazon haul.

One of the reasons why social media is so addictive is because it puts us in a state of cognitive ease. It’s no surprise that after a long day at school or work, places that generally require high cognitive effort, we prefer distractions that require minimal mental effort. Social media platforms are designed to exploit this by offering endless streams of easily digestible, visually appealing content, that don’t require you to think that much, you can just go on autopilot and enjoy the latest reels, which will in the long run will probably make you feel lonelier and more depressed. Opt-in for tasks that are more high-yield yet are still on the lighter end of cognitive capacity – meditate, journal, or call a friend – this will recharge you much faster and in a more sustainable way than any app.

Get rid of productivity apps. Productivity apps promise to streamline tasks and boost efficiency, but they often have the opposite effect. And I don’t mean standard productivity apps like Calendar, Notes, or Reminders – they are very useful. I am referring to the overwhelming array of specialized productivity apps that claim to revolutionize how we work but often fail to deliver. These include elaborate task managers, habit trackers, or workflow automation tools that require significant time to set up, learn, and maintain. Instead of simplifying workflows, they overcomplicate simple tasks with endless features, notifications, and integrations that demand constant attention. The effort required to maintain and organize them eats away at the real work that needs to be done. At the end of the day, they’re still apps and most of them need your engagement to grow. Most of the time you don’t need to log your tasks or get an inspiring quote to get started, you just need to get started, even if you don’t feel like it because focus, energy, and inspiration generally come after you start a task, which is also known as a state of flow.

Remember that your phone isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s a tool – and like any tool, it’s all about how you use it. By setting boundaries and being intentional, you can turn wasted hours into productive time and take back control of your day.

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