How to turn your phone into a productive machine?

Hey friends,

If you are asked which thing you procrastinate the most, the answer is pretty obvious. In the 21st century, our smartphones act no more than a life partner, no one can deny. But when it comes to getting things done, you will end up doing useless scrolling on your phone if you are not careful enough. But what if I tell you that there are proven ways of regaining control over your phone rather than the phone controlling you. Let's talk.

Happy reading!!

📵Create distance between you and your phone to lessen your habit of “Checking in”:

It’s not how much you use your phone that’s a problem. It’s how often you impulsively check it. According to Nir Eyal, author of "Hooked: How to make habit-forming products", apps and tools on your phone have become so good at forming habits that they don’t even need notifications to steal your attention. We check our phones not just because something told us to. But because we’ve built habits that tell us to do it on our own.

📴Remove immediate triggers from your home screen to stay on task:

The scope for our phones to go from helpful tools to destructive forces depends on what we see the moment we open them. Your home screen is a battle for your attention. And unfortunately, most of us are on the losing side. To use your phone productively, you need to create the right menu. That means removing any distracting apps that will pull at your attention and bombard you with notifications. If you want to go to the extreme, you can even turn your phone greyscale to remove the color triggers from app icons.

📳Try to declutter your phone:

You might not know but your phone is nothing less than a wastepaper basket. There are several apps that you have installed earlier and don’t bother to use them now. These do nothing but eat up your phone storage and performance. Invest a few minutes of your time to find those unuseful apps and delete them. Some of them may be multiple launchers, multiple keyboards apps, multiple music streaming apps, and so on.

🔧Use a tool to help understand and control your actual usage:

Changing the way you use your phone means changing your behavior. And research has shown that to change the way we think and act, we need more than just willpower alone. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools you can use to either add friction to your phone usage or track the time you spend on it for an accurate picture of just how much it’s impacting your workday. Here are a few you might want to check out:

• Forest:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.forestapp

• Boosted:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boostedproductivity.app

• Action Dash (Digital Wellbeing):https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actiondash.playstore

• Filter Box-Pro Notification:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.catchingnow.np

I would also suggest using Niagra Launcher that makes your phone screen more productive.

🖋Quote of the week:

“If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”

-James Clear (Atomic Habits)

That was pretty much for this week.

Have a great week ahead, Soumyadeep.