sirens of Greek mythology<\/a> \u2013 that prevents you from focusing on immediate tasks and responsibilities. At home, the constant ringing and beeping \u2013 or you just compulsively checking your email \u2013 is not only a persistent irritant for family and friends, but it also keeps you from being present in your life away from work.<\/p>\nThankfully, there are some tangible steps you can take to break the grip that your smartphone has on you. Here are seven simple rules you can follow to help you regain control of your smartphone so it is once again a tool of efficiency and productivity rather than a weapon against your freedom and mental health.<\/p>\n
Rule #1<\/strong>: Don\u2019t look at your smartphone in the morning until you are ready to respond to it. Peeking at your email or phone messages before you have dressed or had breakfast can only create unnecessary distraction, worry, and stress. If you\u2019re married with children, it will also prevent you from being engaged with your family before you leave for work. In fact, if at all possible, don\u2019t even look at your emails during the drive to work; again, it would serve no purpose as you can\u2019t\u2014or, at least, you shouldn\u2019t\u2014be thumb typing during your commute (unless you\u2019re on a train or bus and you can respond to your phone and email messages).<\/p>\nRule #2<\/strong>: Don\u2019t look at your smartphone during the day unless you are ready to act on it. It\u2019s not uncommon for businesspeople to look at their smartphones as they head into a meeting or just before a conference call. The primary consequence of doing this is that you will be distracted from your next task. You will be thinking about what you found on your smartphone instead of focusing on the task ahead.<\/p>\nRule #3<\/strong>: Turn off all smartphones during meetings. In fact, every company should have a \u201cno-smartphone\u201d rule for all meetings. There are few things more irritating, distracting, and productivity-killing than having people at a meeting looking at and typing into their smartphones. They are clearly not paying attention to the meeting and, therefore, unable to contribute in any meaningful way. It also distracts others at the meeting. It wastes time and prolongs meetings because no one is focusing on the agenda. Quality and productivity suffer too\u00a0 because the lack of full engagement means that effective problem solving and decision making will be nearly impossible.<\/p>\nRule #4<\/strong>: Don\u2019t check your smartphone less than 30 minutes before you go to bed. If there are calls or emails you think you must respond to you, you will get to bed later and you\u2019ll get riled up, so you\u2019ll have a harder time falling asleep. The reality is that, in most cases, they can wait until morning, so best not to look. At best, commit to not checking your smartphone at all in the evening. At worst, choose a time between 30 and 60 minutes before bedtime when you take a last look at your smartphone.<\/p>\nRule #5<\/strong>: Don\u2019t do your smartphone when you are doing life. In other words, don\u2019t look at your smartphone if you are interacting with others, doing something that is supposed to clear your mind of work, such as exercise, meditation, having a meal, watching a movie, or hanging out with family or friends. There is nothing more annoying to family and friends than to be with you when you are making business calls or responding to email\u2014why are you even with them if you\u2019re with them in body only? It\u2019s okay to check your smartphone periodically, but ONLY IF you don\u2019t interrupt more important life stuff and ONLY IF you are expecting something that you may have to act on quickly.<\/p>\nRule #6<\/strong>: Don\u2019t use your smartphone when it would be rude to do so. You may think that you are important (and you may truly be), but that doesn\u2019t give you license to be disrespectful of others. Restaurants, grocery stores, and public transportation are some of the most frequent settings for rude smartphone behavior. As someone who travels regularly, there are few things more annoying than some business type who doesn\u2019t realize that he (almost always a man) is using a cell phone not a yell phone and, as a result, shares his phone conversation with the rest of the gate area or airplane. If you absolutely must take a call in a public place, be aware of the loudness of your voice and try to move away from people if at all possible. And a practice that I use is to cover my mouth when speaking on my phone in public. I was hoping to start a trend here, but this attempt at mobile phone etiquette hasn\u2019t caught on yet.<\/p>\nRule #7<\/strong>: There are exceptions to the above rules. The reality is that there are times when you have to be available no matter where you are or whom you are with. You may be on call, there may be a crisis, or a big deal is in the pipeline.<\/p>\nUnderstand that these rules are not set in stone and can be modified to fit your own particular needs. What is important is that you have rules that guide your smartphone-use behavior and to establish these rules over your smartphone as the default rather than the exception, so deviating from them requires deliberation and conscious choice.<\/p>\n
Letting Go<\/strong><\/p>\nYour dependence on your smartphone is a habit that develops through repeated use. So you can think of separating from your smartphone as breaking an old habit and ingraining a new one; it takes commitment, discipline, and repetition to change. You will find that there are many upsides to regaining control of your smartphone. The people in your life will welcome you back from the smartphone precipice and actually want to be around you. You will be more relaxed, more engaged in life, have more fun, be a whole lot happier and, despite your great fondness for your smartphone, you may just find more interesting and enjoyable things to do with your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The smartphone has become a ubiquitous status symbol of and tool for businesspeople doing business. In offices, on the streets, and in airports, what self-respecting businessperson doesn\u2019t have their smartphone, whether a Blackberry, Windows Mobile device, Palm, or iPhone, at the ready to make the deal, provide support, change the plan, or just stay up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1685,1526],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}