Taming Digital Distractions: A Designer’s Insights on Boosting Productivity

How some small changes on your devices can help you reclaim time.

I have been designing digital products for over a decade. You often want to ensure that your customer uses your product frequently. One way of doing this could be behavioural momentum. For example, if you spend ten hours per day on Twitter, you would think: I am intelligent and would not spend ten hours on something unless it was helpful. Therefore, this must be useful so I can keep doing it. Product designers use many other tactics to ensure you spend as much time on their product as possible.

I was mindful of how I was using my devices. Reflecting on 2020, I spent a lot of time on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and 9Gag. I like the comparison of an infinite well. Once you start scrolling, there is no end, and the apps do a great job of keeping you engaged. I began to research how I could stop wasting my time on mindless scrolling.

I like the approach that if you want to build a habit, you have to reduce friction, and when you’re going to get rid of an unhealthy obsession, you have to increase friction. An excellent example would be that if you want to run more, you could sleep in your running gear, making it much easier to get out of the house the next day.

If you want to watch less TV, you could remove the batteries from the TV remote and put them in another room. So, I was setting out to find a way…