5 tips that I used to decrease my screen time & increase my productivity:
Increasing screen time over the past few years
The first thing that tells if you’re using your gadgets for more time than what is good for your health is the Screen Time feature on your iPhone. Android has it too, it’s called as Digital Wellbeing. If your screen time is more than what you want it to be then these tips which worked for me may be useful for you.
1. Stop checking your phone early in the morning
First thing I did is stop checking my phone after waking up for at least 30 minutes. There are a lot of studies that shows checking your phone after waking up is a significant mistake and it poses serious threats to your productivity. It causes disturbances to your sleep schedule, causes distractions which may further lead to anxiety and other health issues. Instead of checking your phone you can do some physical activities like exercises, yoga or going for a morning stroll which is good for your heart too. So stop checking your phone at least for the first 30 minutes after waking up.
2. Social media detox
The next thing that I did when I started to take my productivity seriously is deleting all my major social media accounts and applications from my mobile phone. At first it seemed as an impossible task to do and I thought I couldn’t get my mind over not using social media. But after I deleted all my accounts what I noticed was really an eye opener for me. I started feeling more and more confident in myself, my happiness levels have increased, my productivity and time management has increased. Social media for a few minutes would be okay, but it would not be for scrolling through feed continuously for hours.
3. Using paper notes
Thirdly, I went with physical note making on paper instead of digital note making. I did this because I wanted to minimize the chances of having to look into my phone and also there’s something particularly satisfying about writing on paper than on a digital screen. And for reading too I prefer a physical paper copy rather than on a PDF just because looking at the screen for a prolonged period of time will cause eye strain and headaches for me.
4. Using the time limit feature
Further I limited some of the applications that I tend to spend more time using. Basically what I did was to set a time limit for the applications that took up more time than I intended on using them. For example, I had set a time limit for YouTube to use it only for about 30 minutes everyday. And this greatly helped me reduce my screen time and focus on my offline life and increase my productivity. You can know which apps you are using more than required by going into your Screen Time on iPhone’s and Digital Wellbeing on Android’s, scroll a bit and you can see the list of apps that you are using and the amount of time you are spending on them. Tap on an app and below you can see an option to set the time limit for it. So accordingly you can limit the time for the app you are using more.
5. Turning off notifications from less used apps
Lastly, one of the main things I did was turning off notifications from the apps that I least frequently use. One of the main reasons you’re going to get distracted and start using your phone after being productive for a while are your notifications. I had a lot of difficulty focusing on the tasks I was doing after receiving a notification. I just had the feeling to go and check that notification. I got so distracted many times and even ditched the task that I was doing and procrastinated a lot saying to myself that I will do it in a few minutes but ended up not doing it. Turning off my notifications and focusing on the task I am doing has helped me a lot to complete my tasks on time and which in turn helped me to increase my confidence and decrease the frequency of procrastination which was the main contributor to my decreased productivity. Another thing you can do is adding those apps to scheduled summary(for iPhone users).
So these are some of the important tips that helped me to increase my productivity and decrease my screen time. Consider subscribing and sharing these tips to your family and friends to help them increase their productivity too. If you want some more tips or other productivity based tips send me an Email on vstanlysilas@gmail.com.
