How to Turn Your Phone into a Productivity Superpower in 2020
I was born in 2001.
At eighteen years old, I’ve lived half of my life not knowing what the company Apple was and the other half being practically consumed by it.
This has led me to consider why we idolize our phones so much and how we’ve become addicted to them so quickly, but most importantly, how we can leverage them to become better people.
If you’ve read my stuff before, you’d know I firmly believe that we live in a remarkable age that no one before us had the privilege of living in.
Just think about it — the World Wide Web wasn’t invented until 1990.
And 30 years later, we can access practically any information we want by opening the Safari app on our smartphones without thinking twice about it.
What we used to view as technologically advanced and history-making we now hold in the palm of our hands for about 5.4 hours a day.
But what if we went back to viewing our phones like the magical, world-changing devices we used to consider them?
The answer: we’d be smarter, more productive and (potentially) making way more money.
So in this post, I’m going to guide you through six steps to transforming your phone into a device that’ll allow you to learn anything you want and make your goals more achievable.
Step 1 — Identify Your Goals
Without knowing what you want to achieve, you’re at risk of letting your phone become a distraction instead of a tool.
Identifying your goals doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out process. You don’t have to dig deep or do soul searching to understand what it is you want to make happen.
All you have to do is ask yourself, “what do I want to know?” or “what do I want to do?”
Your answer could be anything from “I want to know how to invest” to “I want to know how to make lasagna.”
But that’s the beauty of your human potential combined with 21st-century technology — you have no excuse not to explore your creativity, desires and curiosity.
To start, make it a habit to ask yourself “what do I want to learn today?” when you wake up in the morning.
If that doesn’t automatically make your life feel more magical, I don’t know what else will.
Step 2 — Get Your Mindset Right
Not only do we have the blessing of the internet in 2020, but we also have an abundance of “mindset gurus.”
According to Forbes, life coaching is an estimated 2 billion dollar industry with an annual growth of 5.5%.
But here’s a secret you absolutely need to know: you don’t have to spend tons of money on a coach to harness the powers of your mind.
Before you open Safari to start researching a topic or downloading productivity apps, remind yourself that your phone is your tool, not your master.
Whether we realize it or not, it’s quite easy for us to become slaves to technology.
Our phones distract us with notifications from apps we rarely use, we feel guilty for not instantly replying to a text, we lose hours of our day scrolling through people’s highlight reels and more.
But understanding your true potential and learning how to use your phone to unlock it begins with understanding your place.
You simply have to start viewing your phone as your secret weapon to ruling the world, and stop subconsciously treating it like your master.
Step 3— Set Up Time Budgets
A study conducted by Provision Living found that the average American spends 5.4 hours on their phone a day.
Furthermore, Review42 found that the average person spends 142 minutes per day on social media alone.
That’s approximately 2.37 hours per day.
If your goal is to use your phone to become more productive, more knowledgable or more profitable, you must first observe your screentime habits and set up “time budgets.”
You can do this by going to your iPhone settings and selecting “Screentime.”
You’ll then see a breakdown of your time expenditure — exactly what apps you spend the most time on.
If you aren’t happy with your results (or simply want to cut back on certain apps), use the “app limits” feature on the same page.
This allows you to set time limits (or “budgets”) on certain apps. After you’ve spent your set amount of time daily time on the app, it locks until the next day.
Of course, you can choose to ignore the limit and unlock your phone too early if you so decide. But trust me, you’ll feel bad enough about it to stick to your time budget anyway.
Step 4— Create a Framework for Learning and Research
Creating a framework is essentially establishing a “workflow” for your learning process.
How much time will you spend researching or working toward your goal?
Which apps, software and search engines will you use?
When do you actually start implementing what you’ve learned?
To create a workflow, identify the steps you need to take from knowing nothing to making progress.
For example, my standard framework/workflow might look something like this:
- Step 1 — Run a Google search
- Step 2 — Read 2–3 guides/articles while taking notes
- Step 3 — Create my action plan based on the advice I just read
- Step 4 — Complete my action plan step-by-step
Let’s say I want to learn Japanese. Using my framework, I’d follow these steps:
- Step 1 — Look up “how to learn Japanese” on YouTube
- Step 2 — Watch 3 videos while taking notes
- Step 3 — Create an action plan for learning beginner-level Japanese
- Step 4 — Complete action Step #1 (i.e. “buy a Japanese textbook” or “learn basic greetings”
Step 5— Download Productivity or Learning Apps
We talked about some of the apps that might distract you, but what about the apps that’ll help you?
There’s an abundance of apps hiding out in the App Store that keep you focused and on-track with your goals.
To start, here are five productivity and accountability apps I highly recommend:
- Trello: an app for staying organized, saving ideas to boards and setting due dates for tasks.
- Notes app: this is the app that comes with your phone, but is insanely useful for taking notes when you can’t handwrite them.
- Pomodoro: based on the Pomodoro Technique, this productivity and time management app lets you set a timer for a period of intense focus while listening to soothing sounds.
- Productive: this app allows you to make a list of habits you’d like to form daily, such as reading, drinking water, studying, etc. and tracks the progress you make. The streak feature motivates you to continue, and you can plan your habits into specific times in your schedule.
- TimeBloc: the digital version of a daily planner, this app allows you to create tasks or habits to complete throughout your day. Synchronize the app with your phone calendar and mark certain tasks as daily routines.
Step 6 — Track Your Progress
If you don’t know where you’ve been, you won’t go very far.
Not only does tracking your progress guide you towards the next steps, but it also motivates you to stay consistent with your goals.
You can do this with an app like Productive, create a spreadsheet or Google Doc or simply draw out checkboxes in a journal.
Checking off your box or seeing your streak update is one of the most satisfying (and motivating) feelings in the world, and is essential to your success.
And there you have it — six simple steps to transform your phone into a productivity power tool.
Our human potential is limitless, and we own a piece of technology that makes it easier than ever to make our dreams become reality.
It’s time we start treating it as such, and giving ourselves the credit we deserve.
And I promise you, once you realize the potential you have and how simple it is to harness it, life becomes a whole lot more magical.
