I used to have a problem; my attention was skipping from notifications to notifications, apps to apps, sometimes to a quick check to see the number of likes my last Instagram post received. It didn't stop there as my phone kept buzzing with Vodafone's message about new plans or Dunkin Donuts informing me about their new offers.
There was always something to check, new email, new messages, a Facebook notification saying someone liked your photo. It was an endless stream and hours later, I sat there wondering where did all my time go and why I was not even close to finishing the 30-minute essay I was writing. In the end, despite the always connected life, I was always anxious, stressed, depressed and failing in multiple fronts in life. I became a slave to the ever-present smartphone.
The biggest eye opener was when I came across the findings of Gloria Mark, one of the leading researchers on 'interruption science.' Her paper titled "The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress" , explains that unrelated external interruptions cost us 23 minutes before we resume focus. That means, it takes 23 minutes on average to get your focus back to the work you have been doing after attending to a simple message notification. Our lives were hijacked by our smartphone and companies who had apps on it - always buzzing and pinging for our attention.
"Our phone puts a new choice on life's menu, at any moment, that's "sweeter" than reality," says Tristan Harris, former Product Philosopher at Google . " We grow less and less patient for reality as it is, especially when it's boring or uncomfortable," Harris explains. As a result, our attention span is in reduced, our ability to focus on important tasks are disappearing, and most importantly our gross personal productivity is on a steady decline as we waste precious hours after hours staring at screens. So here is how to un-hijack your life from smartphone and turn it into a productivity companion:
Step 1: Understand how your smartphone has hijacked...
From time to time, we humans were sceptical about new technologies reshaping society. Centuries ago Socrates was worried about writing as he said writing would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls because they would not use their memories.”
But this time it is different because what is called 'attention economy.’ “Every product will only get more persuasive over time; Facebook must become more persuasive if it wants to compete with YouTube and survive. And YouTube must become more persuasive if it wants to compete with Facebook."
Harris points out, “just like the food industry manipulates our innate biases for salt, sugar and fat with perfectly engineered combinations; the tech industry bulldozes our innate biases for social reciprocity, social approval, social comparison and novelty-seeking." This is how our minds got hijacked.
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