The Biggest Productivity Mistake That I Make Everyday

While we’re always taught about little tricks to increase our productivity by a few minutes, there’s something simple and absolutely fatal that 44% of us do every single day.

At this point in my life, having my phone always on me has just become second nature. As a matter of fact, there’s times where I feel abnormal when I don’t feel the presence of my phone in my pocket. Although this fancy piece of glass with a fruit logo has many technological advancements and provides great convenience in my everyday life — it has also prevented me from reaching my highest potential levels of productivity. Using my phone before bed and in the morning is the biggest productivity mistake that I make everyday. But I’m definitely not alone — 44% of people sleep with their phones beside them every single night.

There are two great negatives that occur when using your phone at night and in the morning. First of all, you’ve probably heard (and experienced) that using your phone at night makes it harder to sleep. Not only are you wasting away precious time while you scroll through the same Instagram pictures for the third time that day — this is time that could be spent on resting and preparing for the next day. Furthermore, exposing yourself to such harsh lighting makes it physically harder to fall asleep and is the reason why most individuals are not well rested for the next day.

There is actually a number that can be put on this habit, as Harvard conducted a study which concluded for the average worker, lack of sleep leads to the loss of 11.3 days worth of productivity each calendar year. This is actually the equivalent of about $2,280 lost due to lack of productivity.

Now the second negative comes from using your phone in the morning. This is the habit that most people don’t realize they do, but I believe is much bigger of a problem (at least for myself). When I use my phone in the morning, I have put myself into a literal rut where I will be using my phone for 45 minutes before getting up. Checking emails, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, responding to texts, sending Snapchat streaks and much more has become a habit of my daily routine. Creating a rut like I have myself means that I waste a good amount of time every morning laying in bed going through apps on my phone just so I can procrastinate getting out of bed. It really hits hard when I realize after I get out of bed all the work I could have gotten done. Sigh.

Now you may be asking — is there a fix? Well, for starters now I try to toss my phone on the other side of the room before I fall asleep. When I wake up, I try to open up my mind by reading for 15 minutes. The days that I have attempted this allow me to sleep much better and also feel more energized the next morning. Sometimes the biggest mistakes we make are right under our noses, and we don’t even realize it.