IsYour Smartphone Impacting Your Productivity?

I finally upgraded my phone this week from my archaic “just-a-phone” flip phone, which I’ve had for over 10 years, to an Android smartphone. Part of me wondered why it took me so long, while another part of me was aware of how afraid I was of how my smartphone could affect my daily life.

This made me think back to an article I read recently on www.futurity.org about how small distractions can double work mistakes. The article describes a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology which showed that even a 3 second interruption during a relatively difficult task can double the chances of making a mistake. So then you start to think: how many 3 second interruptions do we experience in a day? Whether it’s your colleagues or family member poking their head in to chat, your Outlook pinging you with a new email, or your smartphone buzzing with anything from an email, a text message, a Facebook update, it all adds up. Even if you plan to ignore it, just taking a quick glance to look who is calling or texting can be enough of a distraction to put you off-track. For those procrastinators out there, that small distraction can interrupt your train of thought so much that instead of getting back to work, you end up checking your email, checking that one thing online, and then totally get engulfed in something else entirely.

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a technophile, being a computer engineer in my past career, and spend quite a bit of time at my computer and on the internet, whether for work or fun. But what I truly love about being a Naturopath is that when I am with a patient, my phone is off, my laptop lid is closed and I get to sit down with good old-fashioned pen and paper and just listen. It’s a wonderful break from the bright lights and too-fast-paced technological world we now live in.

I would encourage everyone to turn off their phones (vibrate isn’t enough – I mean OFF) and even go so far as to disconnect their computers from the internet when working on a task that requires a relatively high degree of concentration. You’ll see that you probably get it done quicker and then will have more time for yourself at the end of the day. And while you’re at it, you could also try to just turn everything off to do something like curl up with a hot cup of chai tea and a good book.