How To Curb Your Smartphone Addiction In The Workplace

One of the best ways to ensure productivity at work is to ensure that the environment is conducive and can offer uninterrupted concentration.

Whether at home or work, attention requires eliminating distraction.  However, it is impossible to achieve productivity and an optimal state of concentration with a smart phone in front of you. In order to curb this addiction, these steps should suffice:

Understand your usage.

Most people buzz their way through the day, as their smartphones constantly demand attention. Getting control of your smartphone usage starts with understanding how, why, when and what you use it for. Outline and eliminate the usage importance.

Supervise settings.

Set your phone to Do Not Disturb mode, where no notifications will show in order to discourage use.

Addictive apps like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have begun introducing similar features, where users can track their usage, gain more control over notifications, and set daily usage limits. Email and other tools like Slack can also be controlled to snooze at certain times to ensure users are fully available at the appropriate times.

Curb your checking.

Resist the urge to check your phone every time it rings. Exploit the craving to check and consciously choose not to check. Every time you successfully beat the urge to check your phone, you strengthen your resolve.

For communications that are absolutely critical or urgent, identify a communication channel for emergencies only, such as calling.

Search For alternatives

It is often said that “emotion drives attention”. This is why it’s so easy to slip into the mindless scrolling of social feeds, because it inserts us into the lives of those we care about. To make checking your phone less appealing, engage yourself through a better alternative. Find ways to attach emotion and meaning to the work and tasks you do every day.