Work Smarter Without Using Your Smartphone

Being without your device basically let's you apply 95% of all productivity tips in one go and working without your device for a full day means supporting your productivity and well-being alike. Yet, a weekly day off means a real challenge for many of us. So at best, start it as an experiment: Can you still manage some hours without your phone? How does it feel?

If you're up for that challenge, here's some advice on how to avoid getting into trouble and to improve your productivity:

#1 Focus

All the productivity tips over the web have one thing in common that they recommend and that successful people do: focus. Focus on one thing at a time and get rid of all distractions.

When you feel like doing something else: embrace the feeling coming up. And also listen to yourself: why did you want to stop doing what you do? How is your breathing? Where is your mind going? There will be many impulses which you can't and shouldn't immediately follow up upon – looking up this thing on Wikipedia, checking your Facebook status, answering this email or following this superb idea.

#2 Make notes and get back to work

In case you wonder with your mind to other things, just make sure they aren't lost. Get yourself a notebook (a piece of paper will do, too) to write them down for later and get back to work. In the evening go through the list and take necessary actions.

#3 Organise your day the day before

Go through the day before it has begun: What's coming up? What do you want/need to get done? For our 'Mobile free Monday', you should ideally do this on Fridays. It's then also an opportunity to finish your week and plan the next. To fix meetings, send out your requests now or call your contacts right away. This way you get a head start into the next week: get straight into working mode, get your things done quickly and have important meetings already on Tuesday.

#4 Limit your availability

Setting up an auto-reply for your emails, you could even limit your availability to something like 2 x 2 hours per week. This can work great to maximize your effectiveness. Just take into account that people will take you up on this.

#5 Use (OFFTIME)

Of course, our last and final advice is to use apps like (OFFTIME). It not only allows you to block you out from your phone for some time – so you don't procrastinate -, but it can also filter your callers and can give certain callers a little status update, telling them when you're going to be available again ("Sorry, Max is currently in a meeting. Please try to call again after 4 pm."). Our mobile devices and the apps in it are really good in helping us getting things done but too much of anything is also a bad thing. We all learn to be more productive without relying too much on our mobile devices.