Do It Today: Overcome Procrastination, Improve Productivity, and Achieve More Meaningful Things

Part II: Improving Productivity
“It’s like a lot of things, said the smith. Do the least part of it
wrong and ye’d just as well to do it all wrong.”
- Cormac McCarthy

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Smartphones Harm Your
Productivity More Than You Think
Believe me, that thing you’re using to read this article is not
your friend. And even if you’re reading this on your laptop of
PC, there’s one thing I want to ask you: How important is
your device to you?
I was shocked when I read a weird statistic a while back. An
experiment, which was conducted by the universities of
Würzburg and Nottingham Trent, revealed that 
37.4% of the
participants
 rated their phone as more or equally important
in relation to their close friends.
Weirdoes. Seriously, what’s wrong with people? 29.4 percent
of those weirdoes even said their smartphone was equally
important, or more important, to them than their parents.
Or is there something wrong with me? Am I just an old
school person who likes to read books all day and only has a
few close friends and family members that he actually
values?
Look, I’m not joking around. Smartphones are
dangerous. 
Not because they may cause stress, anxiety,
and even depression
, but because they change your
behavior. It seems like we can’t focus on one thing for more
than 5 seconds. Why? Well, we 
can’t 
because our
smartphone is constantly going off.
Not because people are calling you (it seems like people are
afraid of calling these days, but that’s another topic), but
because you’re constantly getting notifications about
THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER.
Change Your Smartphone Behavior

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The same study I mentioned above also
 found something
else
:
“Researchers asked participants to perform a concentration
test under four different circumstances: with their
smartphone in their pocket, at their desk, locked in a drawer
and removed from the room completely.”
The results are significant — test results were lowest when
the smartphone was on the desk, but with every additional
layer of distance between participants and their
smartphones, test performance increased. Overall, test
results were 26% higher when phones were removed from
the room.”
Sure, it’s just a study. And you don’t have to believe
everything you read. But this is something I can personally
attest. For the past two years, I’ve significantly changed my
smartphone behavior. Namely:
I have turned off ALL my notifications except
messages and calls
I’ve removed myself from all Whatsapp groups
except for one with my closest friends
I’ve removed all news apps (if something important
happens, you’ll hear it from the people around you)
I only consume music, paid journalism, articles from
specific authors I follow, podcasts, YouTube videos
(mostly to learn, but also for entertainment
because I’m not a robot), books, and audiobooks on
it
For the rest, I use my phone to call, text, and to
take notes, photos and videos
Also, I’ve stopped immediately responding to notifications.
That doesn’t mean I don’t value other people who try to
reach me. It means that I refuse to be a slave to my phone. I
control my phone.

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For most of us, it’s the other way around. In the past,
Facebook, Instagram, Apple, Google, etc, all controlled my
mind. Obviously, they still do because the only way to
escape those idiots is to cut yourself off and run to the
woods. That’s not realistic.