You just wanted to look at the time and ended five hours of kittens videos

The procrastination It is one of the main reasons why you fail to do everything you have set at the beginning of the day. You know that you should do a certain task, you know that if you do not have consequences, but even so, You are unable to face it.

However, there is an even more silent and powerful enemy: the mobile phone.

This device, which we carry in the pocket (or in hand) all day, has become A constant source of distraction that steals minutes and hours of sibyline. According to data From Exploding Topics, users spend on average about four hours and 37 minutes a day using the mobile. That implies losing a day a week looking down, or 70 days a year. What would you do with 70 more days?

Take awareness of time

The applications and services you use on the mobile have been specifically designed To capture your attention constantly. Notifications, messages and social networks interrupt us at any time, and they do it consciously To attract your attention. Do not hesitate, they are very well designed and usually succeed.

However, that success of the one part implies the defeat of another: Your concentration. Every time you review a notification, or you “just a view of your mobile, you are not only interrupting your concentration and the workflow, but you must add an average of 23 minutes to return to the state of concentration what you had before.

One way to reduce that use, at least during the periods in which you must maintain concentration, is take awareness of the time you spend Using your mobile and what applications you devour your time. Both Apple and Android mobiles have a digital well -being section in adjustments, in which the screen time and use statistics.

Consult them daily, and write down the time you spend using the mobile, as well as the time of the day you use it most. That will allow you to detect your use patterns and help you reduce its use during the stripes in which You should be studying, doing sports or learning To make crochet.

The limits of space and time

Know How do you use the mobile It allows you to know if you are using it excessively in work with applications that have little to do with it, if you do it during your free time or even at hours when you should reduce dopamine levels for reconcile sleep.

That information allows you, for example, to adopt the “monk mode“When you must maintain all your concentration in working or studying, and not leaving all responsibility in hands of your willpower. Do you remember what apps were designed to capture your attention? They also have the willpower effect. Not working.

The best you can do to avoid falling into the temptation of your notifications And focusing on what you need to finish, it is to prevent your mobile from having the slightest opportunity to capture your attention. The easiest way to do so is to adopt a strategy of “Ulysses contract“, so that you I present, avoid that you I of the future falls into the temptation to look at notifications.

In this sense, the options of the digital welfare section or time of use of your mobile can be very useful, since it allows you to program schedules for concentration modes or limit the use of certain applications during a specific time slot. Thus, The limits are automated To help you reduce interruptions that break your concentration.

Rediscovering free time

Like energy, habits are neither created nor destroyed, They only transform. The bad habits are not eliminatedthey are only replaced For good habits. The same thing happens over time.

The time that little by little you are going to scratch social networks and kittens videos, you will be able to use it to do what you want: learn languages, read, do sports or share more time with your friends.

Therefore, it is important to think What do you want to spend that time That progressively you will recover, and be aware that that time, that you now use in something tangible, before it was screen time. In this way, you will have a goal to achieve and your effort to recover time acquires a purpose.

THE TIME BOOK

In the first section we recommended to take awareness of the time of daily use of your mobile, and write it down to detect patterns. Once you start taking action in this regard, continue to take a record of your use data but, this time, add What do you use that time Diary you recover.

Those notes are the proof of your little victories. If one day you manage to reduce ten minutes of use, indicate that you have used those ten minutes toRead some pages of a book, or that you have called a friend to ask him how his day.

Do it, it has the same effect as cross out a task on your list. It is the finding of the work done, and of The reward for that effortcontributing to Maintain motivation to continue changing screen time for productive time for you.

In Xataka | Technology has undermined one of the best tools for productivity and creativity: to leave time to get bored

Image | Unspash (Robin Worrall, ROB HAMPSON)