Phones and social media are some of the greatest enemies to productivity. Every time our phones ding, our concentration is broken and we either instinctively check the message right away or we can choose to ignore it. Our species has survived for millennia without the aid of cell phones, but now we feel as if we can’t survive with them by our side. I’m a millennial that has been using social media since 2003 and started my Facebook account in 2006, so social media is pretty interwoven into my life at this point. However, I’ve begun to resent these technologies and their addictive effects. Here are some helpful strategies for avoiding digital distraction.
Go Colorless
Our human brains are designed to respond to bright colors, so all the bright, shiny app icons and little red notification dots demand our attention. The solution to this is to turn your phone screen grayscale. Scrolling through Instagram is way more boring when there aren’t vivid colors overwhelming our senses. Here’s how to make the switch (don’t worry, you can always switch back when necessary).
iPhone: Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters > choose “Grayscale”
Android: (May vary by manufacturer. There may be an option to switch back and forth easily between comfort view and standard color) Settings > Display > Comfort View
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
If you’re working, put your phone in a drawer on silent mode. If you’re going to the store and feeling brave, just leave your phone locked in your car, or you can simply set your phone to Airplane Mode any time you want some distraction-free time. Rest assured, if there’s an emergency, someone else will have a phone.
Limit Social Media Use
Some people have gone so far as to delete their social media accounts, but for many people, such as myself, that’s not possible since part of our job requires us to be on it.
For those of you who don’t need them, you can delete social apps on your phone (some phone manufacturers have pre-installed social apps that you can’t uninstall). When I have Facebook open, I feel compelled to swipe/scroll down endlessly the “news feed” to see mildly amusing memes and countless random pictures, ads, and political opinions I didn’t ask for. The News Feed Eradicator plugin has been such a relief, as it gets rid of the news feed and replaces it with motivational quotes. If there’s some content I really want to see I can navigate to a specific person or page, or I can simply disable the plugin for a while. Install the News Feed Eradicator plugin here – Firefox Plugin // Chrome Plugin
Block Ads
Ads can be at best a slight distraction and at worst, a hit to your pocketbook. That’s why I utilize ad blocking plug-ins such as AdBlock Plus – Chrome Plugin // Firefox Plugin. Or you may use Opera Browser or Brave Browser, which have native ad blocking support and are available for computers and mobile. Be aware that using an ad block plugin will sometimes make it impossible to use some sites as they won’t let you view their site until you “whitelist” their site.
Stop Spam Calls
Do you ever get annoying sales or robocalls on your cell or office phone? The National Do Not Call Registry is a tool to stop spam callers and is simple to sign up for. Just click on Verify Your Registration and fill in the form. Then you’ll get an email letting you know whether your number is on the list or not. If it’s not, you can then click on Register Your Phone and submit your info. Keep in mind that this registry will stop reputable telemarketers, but will not stop spammers and scammers who don’t obey the law. If you still get any spam calls, you can Report Unwanted Calls through their site.
Schedule Social Media and Internet Browsing Time
Rather than checking your phone every time you have 10 seconds to spare, have a set time when you get all your social media, DMs, personal email, and mindless internet browsing done. We may not feel like people can wait for us to respond in our hyper-connected society. In reality, if something is really urgent, they can give you a call. I have friends who take hours or even days to respond to messages, and after a while you just accept that they’re a busy person and will get to you when they have some time to spare.
Be Mindful of Installed Apps
I like video gaming, and I’ll play on my personal PC and Nintendo systems, but I won’t play anything on my phone. I find many phone games to be addictive, and I don’t need a game in my pocket giving me a constant urge to pick it up and play for a few minutes. If an app is keeping you from doing what you’d like, or need to do, uninstall it. I have no games on my main phone, but I actually have games installed on my old Android phone. So if there’s something I really want to play, I’ll play it at home on my old phone.
Get Rid of Unnecessary Notifications
I get notifications on my phone for text messages, phone calls, Instagram DMs, and Facebook messages. Everything else is in my opinion, is superfluous and can wait several hours or a day or two until I get to it. You can go into the settings of your phone and configure which apps are allowed to send you notifications. You can also configure notifications for your social accounts using these links.
Facebook Notification Settings
Instagram Notification Settings
LinkedIn Notification Settings
How to optimize your notifications for each of these networks could take up an entire blog article. So instead of going into detail, I’d just recommend going through every setting slowly and carefully to disable anything you don’t want to be notified about. Also, keep in mind that if you manage any company pages on social media, there will be another whole set of notifications that you’ll need to disable.
You can also change your notification settings for new Outlook emails. If you find it distracting to get a sound notification or a popup banner, then you can configure how you’d like to be notified.
Clean Up Your Email Inbox
All of us get inundated with emails every day. We may just ignore or delete junk emails instead of actually fixing the problem. If you’re on email newsletters you don’t want, be vigilant about scrolling to the bottom of the email and clicking on the unsubscribe link or blocking the sender if it’s complete spam. Or you can use the platform Unroll Me. Unroll Me shows you all your email subscriptions in one place and lets you unsubscribe with the click of a button. They also give you the option to add emails to a “roll-up” which is a daily email that contains a collection of emails you didn’t want to unsubscribe from, but you would rather not clutter up your inbox.
Another strategy is to create inbox rules and filters (move message to folders, mark as read, delete, etc.). There are certain emails that I want to get for statistical purposes, but don’t really need to read. For example, I get emails from the insurance quote forms (visible on the right of this page) and I have a filter set up to move the quote emails to a “Quote Forms” folder and mark the email as read. So, I’m never aware that a new quote form came in (because I don’t need to be). Here are some instructions for creating rules in Microsoft Outlook and creating filters in Gmail.
I hope these tips have inspired you to amp up your productivity and mental well-being. If you have another idea to “avoid digital distraction”, please share your thoughts on our Facebook post.
