6 easy ways to get more productive... today
Take control of your iPhone, don't let it control you.
For years, my phone dominated my life. It was always in my hand or nearby. I haven't gotten rid of it, but I did create new rules for our relationship.
It started with the six points below. They are not new, but they are powerful.
A cellphone is a tool, but it can also be a time suck machine. If you are serious about getting control over your phone, start with these six steps.
Turn off push email. 99% of emails can wait, and those that can't come with a text or phone call informing you to check your inbox.
Delete all social media apps. How many people are reading your posts? If it's not in the 1,000s, then you are talking into the void. If you are talking into the void, then you aren’t posting a lot. Rather, you are spending your time reading posts on social media. 99.9% of that is a waste of your time. We can talk about growing influence online later. Right now, you need to focus on productivity- delete the apps and move on.
Remove all games. Enough said.
Refine notifications. As the old saying goes, "what's that have to do with the price of tea in China?" How does the latest YouTube notification about Joe Rogan help? Or the weather alert about a storm in a city you visited six months ago? Amazon delivered a package...great...we get packages daily. It takes one minute to refine the push notifications on your phone. Most are useless. Get rid of them.
Delete extra apps. Purge ten apps from your phone today. Unless you are already a minimalist, you have extra apps that you are not using. Get rid of them.
Take hold of the impulse. Now that you have purged your phone, it is going to make a lot less noise. When, not if, you pick up your phone needlessly take hold of that moment. Realize that what you are looking for on your phone is longer there. Then, put the phone down and tackle the next items on your task list.
The goal is to shift your mindset, and to do so you need to take radical steps. If you are worried about missing an email, don’t. You won’t magically forget to check the inbox for days. Do you need to know when your amazon packages arrive? Have the notifications sent to your email.
There are two sides to the coin.
On one side, you waste hours trying to set up systems only to spend more time working on the system than getting work done. This approach is different. Take the low-hanging fruit, eat it, and go from there.
It is guaranteed that if you take these simple six steps and deploy them you will be more productive, less addicted to your phone, and become more aware of the various ways in which you waste time.
Bonus:
If you are spending hours a week scheduling meetings via email, then use these two tips.
Share your calendar with anyone you meet with on a regular basis and ask for theirs as well. The next time you want to meet with them, lead with a calendar request during an open time slot that says, “I saw on your calendar that you are open at this time. Can I get 15 minutes to update you on the project?” Now, you have started the process of getting your colleagues to review your calendar before they email you asking for a time to meet.
For those you don’t want to share your calendar with, use a scheduling tool like Calendly. At any given time I will have over 100 meeting requests out, and I never have to worry about double-booking because Calendly updates my available times as I change my calendar.
6 easy ways to get more productive... today
The notification refinement is spot on. There are apps that need to beep, those that don't, those that don't even need to show up on the lock screen so that they don't cause you to unlock the phone just because of them, and other categories. I process each notification type as they come in, get it done, and organized, and then its done.
I agree on the social media apps, if I really do need Facebook (which is rarely), I'll use it on my phone's browser, I don't need the app constantly pinging me for junk I don't need.
The email idea is also great. Gmail allows me to only allow certain emails, (for me, that is those marked Important) and ping me for those, but no others. It gets crazy otherwise. Filter your emails properly and this really becomes a non-issue.