How To Stop Getting Distracted By Phone

Ankit Rathore May 29, 2022May 29, 2022 0 Comments

Most of us are addicted to our smartphones and they are using us today, while it was designed to be useful for us. You may find that while you planned to have a productive day, you instead spent it on your phone and got nothing done. Have you ever asked why? Well, it’s because the internet is extremely addictive and it can cater to anything you want to see. Internet today has more downsides than upsides and one of the major downsides that it has became a distraction in our lives. So should we stop using our phones? Neglect the tools that it offers? No. You have to break your phone addiction that kills your time, that starts when a notification pop-ups and ends up taking hours. It’s not the phone you’ve to split-up to, it’s your own behaviour. And if you’re pondering how to do that, you’ve come to the right place. We are here to help you with 8 effective ways, implementing which you will stop getting distracted by phone.

Today, on average, a young adult spends 4 hours poring over the phone everyday.
93% of smartphone users have a no-phone phobia.
An average person picks phone 67 times a day.

Steps to Stop Getting Distracted By Phone:

1. Find a Replacement:

You may find that, in the morning, before even brushing your teeth or making a cup of coffee for yourself, you check up your phone. And at the night, it has almost become compulsory for everyone to check their phone. Wait! Did I forget to mention the bathroom bit? There you are. The point here is that majority of us have made phones an integral part of our lives and hence distraction, but of course, comes naturally. So, you should start looking for alternatives.

Start reading a book, before you go to bed.
Replace alarms on phone, with a real alarm clock.
Don’t take your phone in the bathroom

The more tech-free you make your life, the less will be instances where you will find yourself distracted by your phone.

2. Put Your Phone Off Your Zone:

While you are working on a task that is very important to you, or one that requires intense focus and concentration. You would do yourself a favour by putting your phone out of your reach, or least where there is some friction behind reaching your phone.

3. Use Greyscale:

Our eyes have evolved to be highly colour sensitive, keeping that in mind, apps and user interfaces are made. It is designed to keep you hooked and make you keep coming to it frequently by giving dopamine kicks, basically designed to act as a distraction for you.

Using grayscale on your phone certainly makes it less compulsive for you to keep checking your phone.

4. Break The Twitch:

Okay, so how many of you can’t resist the temptation of clicking notifications? Most of you, right! Well, it’s not your fault, it’s the “twitch.” Twitch is the muscle memory inside your brain associated with your incentive reward system. So, the next time you feel the drive to check your phone, remember it’s the twitch making you do it.

Doing something that feels good is our natural tendency, so your job is to break the twitch when you recognize it, and make it your habit.

5. Get Rid Of Boredom! But Not By Your Phone:

We often blame the notifications for the distraction, and you are right to a certain extent. But your boredom too plays a major role in getting you distracted. Whenever a task gets boring, instead of persevering, thanks to our addiction, we take our phone and on it we try to eradicate our boredom by playing video games, using social media e.t.c. it is natural to get bored, what is not natural is removing your boredom by the means of a virtual world. So whenever you feel bored, do one of the following activities

Take a walk
Spend some time in solitude
Read an interesting book

6. Cut The Callbacks:

If it all boils down to that the distraction, that takes hours away from us, starts by a simple notification. I suggest you cut the callbacks i.e; turn off the notifications for each and every app on your phone, except for maybe those on which your work relies heavily on.

7. Use Airplane Mode & Switch Off Tools:

Put your phone in airplane mode while you are working, so that you avoid distraction of every sort, call it call, emais, messages, app notifications etc. You can also switch off your phone while you work, it will also do the same function, the only benefit with this tool is that it helps create more friction.

8. Use Wallpaper as a Reminder:

We can use our phone’s very own wallpaper against distraction.

Keep a wallpaper that motivates you and is capable of driving you away from distraction and towards your task.

“Technology is a good servant but a bad master”

It is a very strange problem that we are facing today as humanity, and it is all due to the internet revolution, that is now available to us at the click of our fingertips in the form of smartphones. With tech giants competing to take control over our attention, the internet, which used to be a tool back then, has now become extremely lucrative and luring, and can cater to anything you want to see. So you better use it wisely otherwise, you might get used.