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Somehow reached to this tacky/clickbaity title “How the smartphone is destroying you from inside” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HjC245ugW8. Probably from the past few days, putting my head to these distractions. They seem to me like modern day alcoholic drinks. You enjoy it and forget your problems, similar promises made by alcoholic drinks.

So the point video makes is, the time we invest in these addictive systems(there whole KPI is to make stay people on their website) is anyways gone, but there are more far reaching impact because of it.

• Because of distraction, you actually context switch from one task to other, which lower your focus on work you’re doing or we can say one is not able to deliver to our fullest potential.

• When we aren’t able to deliver our fullest potential, psychological effect like anxiety, distress chip in, which are far more disastrous for short and long term.

• It also starts a vicious cycle, the more anxiety and distress we feel the more we go for these distractions. In the short-term we don’t see problems, we play games, enjoy movies, adore photos, but the problem doesn’t go away. Problems are still there, and we have even less time to solve them than before. This is a far more powerful/dangerous enemy than smoke ever was, because we don’t even need to go shop for this, it’s at our smartphone, just next to us.

• This continuous loop, then reduces our ability to focus and concentrate.

Solution

So the problem is defined and most of us are aware of it and we need solutions. One such technique if you have lower focus time is to use pomodoro technique, created by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s.

Short note on pomodoro technique which helps me

1. Fix tasks you want to work on.
2. Work in done is this timebox manner: loop(25 - 5 - 25 - 5 - 25 - 5 - 25 - 15 ) OR loop(25 - 5 - 25 - 5 - 25 - 15-)
3. Focus work for 25 mins
4. Take 5 mins break, no phones here, usually a little walk, sometimes water and relax at times
5. Continue this for 3 times.
6. Take a longer break for the 4th time. Continue and repeat.

Reference

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-distractions-can-have-big-consequences/
• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00841/full
• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00439/full