10 lessons that I learned after using my smartphone 60 minutes a day

How many hours a day do you spend using your smartphone? Two? Three? More? It is unlikely that this will positively affect your productivity.

Today we want to introduce you to the translation of the article by Chris Bailey, who decided to conduct an experiment: use your phone only an hour a day and only in business . Let's see what lessons the author has learned from this difficult experiment. Regardless of whether we share them or not, they, at least, seemed interesting to us.

During the last 3 months, I used my smartphone exclusively for one hour a day: a difficult condition, considering that the device is perceived as part of me. In fact, before this experiment, my smartphone was like a sleeve, so merged with the dress of my life, that I could not even imagine existence without it. If I saw a book that I want to read, I photographed it in order to return to it later. If I really wanted to spend time on the bus ... try to guess what was going on.
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There is a saying that the best design is one that is invisible, and this fully applies to my gadget. Over the past few years, my iPhone has been doing a lot of useful things: from waking up in the morning to tracking my sleep, and over time it penetrated my daily routine so much that it became invisible to me. This is an important part of my life, so I could hardly imagine existence without a gadget.

Until the moment I started the experiment.

This performance experiment was not as tough as a meditation for 35 hours a week or as a life in complete seclusion for 10 days, but since it lasted so damn long, it was certainly not simple. Before this experiment, I used the phone for 3-4 hours every day! And now I bring 10 things that I discovered for myself, using a smartphone 1 hour a day for 3 months.

10. You meet interesting people if you do not constantly look at the phone.

Immediately after I started the experiment, I met a man named Michael at the bus stop, simply because I didn’t have headphones in my ears. Similar situations happened 2 more times during the experiment.

9. Your smartphone is a teleportation device.

Your smartphone is a small black hole in your pocket, which draws into your funnel dozens of times every day. If you get it while you are in the elevator, on the bus, while you are walking, it will draw 100% of your attention, significantly reducing your perception until you are transported to your destination. I do not know whether it is bad or good, but I tend to the first option. Like the practice of meditation, which allows you to develop attention, a mobile phone acts exactly the opposite: concentration dissipates.



8. Because of smartphones, people miss much less often, and this is bad.

I noticed that the best ideas come completely spontaneously, especially when I'm bored. When the brain is bored, he looks around for fun and ideas in new places. Also the head digests old ideas when it is not interesting to it. In my opinion, sticking in a smartphone, when you are bored, has a counterproductive effect on perception, especially in the long run.

7. Using a smartphone distracts you much more than you think.

Studies show that "problems associated with the use of a mobile phone while driving a car may be comparable to those associated with drunk driving." But the trick is that people use the phone, not only while driving behind the wheel. They also look into it during a conversation, at a meeting, when they are walking down the street, when they are working. Think about how much attention attracts a smartphone, and in fact we could spend much less time on it than is commonly believed.

6. The smartphone is important, but it worsens your relationships with people.

If I’m offered a choice between having a cup of coffee with someone or chatting with tweets with the same person, I know that I would prefer after my experiment. Text messages, Twitter and Facebook are interesting and attractive, but if you really want to build a relationship with someone, it’s better to meet with the person rather than chat with him on the Internet.

5. At the meeting, it is better to turn off the mobile phone completely .

Absolutely everyone does not care what you do there with your phone. When I drank coffee with a few friends during this experiment, the first thing I did when I sat down at the table with them was to turn off the phone completely. This action is a great way to show how important a person is to you, and that you listen to him 100% attentively.

4. When people are nervous or worried about the situation in which they find themselves, they immediately look at the phone screen.

Next time, going into the elevator, make a mental note about how many people “stick” to the phone, especially if there is only one person other than you. When people are worried about the situation in which they find themselves, they almost always try to occupy their hands and mind with something — usually the telephone comes to their rescue.

3. Using a smartphone is usually useless.

As a rule, most of the things you do with your phone are a waste of time. They include social interaction, status updates and other things that have a very short shelf life (but, nevertheless, stimulate). I can not say that my smartphone is useless: it is, in fact, one of the most practical gadgets in my life. Therefore, you need to spend some time to figure out which actions will provide high returns, because for the most part such activity only eats up time.

2. You use your phone more often and more than you think.

If you make your gadget perform as many actions as I forced yours, I bet: you use your smartphone much more than it seems. If at the beginning of the experiment they asked me how long the use of the device takes, I would say 30-60 minutes a day. But just a few days of calculations allowed me to understand that this is far from true. In fact, I used a smartphone for 3-4 hours every day, simply because I made it do a lot of things. And this is a decent amount of time that can be spent on something more useful than just using the phone. You will be surprised how much time the smartphone takes.

1. Think carefully about how much of your business you are handing over to things.

The theory of "work that needs to be done" is very powerful and widespread. In accordance with it, you kind of “hire” every single device, object, and even person so that it does a certain job. You can “hire” a beautiful, stylishly decorated room so that you feel warm and comfortable, morning coffee to provide yourself with energy and comfort, a life partner to socialize and feel loved, and this site to make your work more productive.

Before the experiment, I delegated most of my tasks to the smartphone. In particular, I entrusted my work with the following work: give access to Twitter, send and receive messages, play music, answer a call, count numbers, open websites, start a video game, be my Starbucks card, calculate a workaround for me, tell me the time ( and be a timer), ... In fact, the more work you assign to a mobile phone, the more your life will be ruined when the device disappears.

Understanding how many tasks you assign your device to do for you will allow you to understand how much space it actually takes in your life.

PS We wish that the smartphone takes the right place in your life - for everyone, your own!

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult