📱Smartphones: A help or hindrance? 5 amazing tips to remove distractions and improve focus
Smartphones are here to stay. They are so prevalent that you’re probably reading this post on your smartphone. Smartphones can make our lives so much easier if used correctly but they can also be the source of so much distraction that they can become counterproductive. Let’s explore the science behind smartphones, what makes them so addicting and how to use them to work for you instead of against you.
What’s good about smartphones?
Smartphones are designed to make life easier. They allow us to have information at our fingertips so that we can quickly find out information in a matter of seconds. What would have taken hours to find out by going to a library can be acquired in a matter of seconds. They have in-built tools like calendars and calculators that we can readily use.
Smartphones are portable and readily available, since they can be kept in your pocket for easy reference. They are light and a basic smartphone is generally affordable to acquire.
They enable better connectivity with others. It has never been easier to connect with others thanks to Facebook, WhatsApp, Internet etc, which gives a feeling of connectedness. Smartphones bridge the gap of distance and make it easier to communicate with others, knowing that as long as there is an internet connection, people are just are click away.
Smartphones are great for storing information. Your contacts, phone numbers and important personal information can be stored on smartphones, meaning you can use your brain to think about more important things.
What’s so bad about smartphones anyway?
Two words: Addiction and social media.
Here’s a short story. In 2008, when I was in high school, Facebook started to become a thing in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Being a 15-year old, I wanted to fit in with my friends and be “cool”, so I created a Facebook account, without actually knowing what Facebook was or how to use it. I would save my lunch money throughout the week, as in, literally not have lunch at all, just so that I could save enough money to buy data for my internet modem, so that I could go on Facebook with the family desktop at home for hours on end. I did this for weeks, and would end up posting random stuff and unnecessarily updating my status about every hour. That was how I became addicted to Facebook, which I eventually realized and and controlled my use.
The way social media corporations, like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, work is that they purposely design their apps to be vibrant and attractive to keep your eyes on the screen for longer. They make more money when you use their apps, which is why they use features like “infinite-scrolling”, where you can literally never run out out of new content to see. The vibrant-design of social media apps and their use of features like catchy notification tones and infinite-scrolling releases large amounts of dopamine in the brain, the “feel-good“ hormone. Each of these dopamine hits re-enforce the feedback loop, making you want to use social media more and experience more of the pleasurable feeling.
Now, I’m not knocking on social media and saying that social media is bad and it should never be used. Social media has its place and is primarily useful for communication, as I mentioned before. I’m saying that we should be aware of how social media corporations use these tactics to draw more traffic to their apps, which most people don’t realize.
Uncontrolled use of social media is the problem, which leads to more distraction and lack of focus. Here is something I’d like to point out. When people say ”I can’t focus”, they mean “I’m easily distracted“. Focus means “lack of distraction“. It does not mean willpower. Here is a diagram to illustrate the point:
Images 1-3 explaining the concept of focus and distraction
Here is an analogy. The three above pictures show the sun, sunlight and a piece of paper. Your goal is to burn the paper i.e. getting a task done. The first diagram shows a wide beam of sunlight [your attention] shining on the piece of paper, which is not going to burn [the task will not be done]. The sunlight beam is wide so more energy is distributed throughout the paper [not focussed], so the paper will not burn.
The second diagram shows high intensity sunlight, like someone using a magnifying glass, to direct the sunlight onto a small part of the paper, which will burn the paper. The sunlight has both been collimated (narrower beam) and has more intensity (energy), which burns the paper. This is what most people think that being focussed means; doing something with extremely high effort for a really long time. That’s not what focus is.
The third diagram is what focus actually is; only narrowing the sunlight beam which burns the paper. The intensity hasn’t changed. In both the second and third diagrams, the paper will burn, but in the third example, only one factor has been adjusted, giving the same result. In radiology, we call this “collimation”, i.e., reducing the width of the beam, which is the same as removing distraction, making the beam more direct, i.e. focussed. The important thing to understand is that you don’t need crazy amounts of effort or willpower to get a task done, you just need to remove distractions [make the beam narrower] so that your attention [the light beam] has nowhere else to go but on the thing that you are doing [burn the paper].
How to get the most from your smartphone
The fundamental principle is to increase focus and limit distractions. Your smartphone is a tool, that, by definition, makes work easier, not hinders it. Here are 5 actionable strategies I use to help boost productivity. All of these strategies are free; they only require you to use less than 2 minutes to implement for a high return on investment (ROI).
📵Use focus mode/do not disturb mode
This feature prevents you from receiving notifications while you are in this mode. You set the duration and you won’t receive any calls, texts or other notifications from your phone. This is very useful in limiting distractions and maintaining focus. But, what if you get an important/urgent/emergency during this time and you don’t know? Well, in your phone settings, you can choose which apps or which contacts can get through to you in this mode. I usually limit this about 5 people; my immediate family members and close friends. That way I can tend to actual emergencies and everything else can wait until after my session finishes. I use “do not disturb“ mode a lot when I am studying or when I want to make significant progress in a personal project. What works for me is to set my “do not disturb“ mode for about 60-90 mins at a time so that I can make significant strides in my personal goals, take a 15 minute break and then repeat. Time-blocking goes well with this.
🤳Phone out of reach
This method is simple; put the phone out of arms-length to reduce the temptation of constantly checking it. Ideally, your phone should be put in another room but arms-length works well too. You goal is to increase the barrier to using your phone while you are getting things done so that you will have to use more effort just to use your phone.
đź“łPhone screen down/phone on mute
This is the most basic level of limiting distraction from your smartphone; just put the phone face down. Out of sight, out of mind! If you don’t see your screen light up with every new notification that comes in, it’s hard to be distracted. But, you will still have to deal with the notification tone with each new notification. That’s when you put your phone on vibrate or silent so you aren’t tempted to check your phone. Both these methods are temporary; you can check your phone and restore normal settings once you have completed the task at hand. If you have to take away one method from this post, let this be it. This will boost your productivity by about 75% or something significant.
🩶Use grayscale mode
When you are using your phone, the bright colours from your phone stimulates your brain by releasing dopamine, making you more likely to use your phone. This is like “shiny object syndrome“, where you see something bright and shiny which makes you want it more. However, studies have shown that changing your phone into grayscale mode improves your productivity levels and focus by about 30% by making your phone less appealing reduces the amount of dopamine your brain releases. You can do this on most smartphones by going into Settings > Accessibility > Visibility settings > Greyscale. I have actually seen this tip suggested multiple times but only now started using it works great (literally using it to write this post).
🫸Limit social media time with intentional use
You’ve probably already heard this tip before but there’s a caveat. Instead of relying on willpower to control how much time you spend on social media, you should use systems and apps. There are a lot of free apps that “restrict“ your use or access to social media, which you can set. Some apps outright stop you from opening social media during certain times of the day, or they make it take longer to open up social media like one.sec, which I use.
The goal is not to stop using social media altogether. The goal is use social media intentionally rather than by default. For most people, social media is their default when they are bored; it’s not intentional, it only serves to fill time. Most people think “I’m bored, I guess I’ll see what’s new on Facebook“ rather than “I am going to spend the next hour scrolling on Facebook and reading through random posts/feeds“.
Let me know if this post was helpful and if any of these tips worked for you. Make 2025 the best year of your life (so far)! Happy New Year!
