Are you and your phone best friends? Is your worst nightmare that your phone runs out of battery and you are in the middle of a forest without your backup charger? If so, then it may be time for you to part ways with your phone, just for a little bit, in order to help you be more successful. Find out the reasons why switching off your mobile phone can help you to be more successful below:
You minimise your distractions
I don’t know about you but my phone is a massive distraction. Whether it is the beeps from texts, emails or messages. Seeing notifications from social media or shock horror an actual phone call – your phone being on is an opportunity for a noise to go off and take your attention away from what you are working on. And I know you can turn it on silent, but even putting it on silent isn’t always enough. In fact, for some people being on silent makes them check their phone even more as they have to look at it in order to see if anyone has rung, text, sent a message or taking an action on social media. So, make life easy for yourself and just switch it off.
You will be in control of your time
This relates closely to point 1, but when you switch off your phone you are putting yourself in control of your time as you are minimising the other people who can make demands on you. That is why I think it is a great idea that you switch your phone off at night and don’t switch it back on until after you have finished your morning routine. If you don’t have a morning routine check out How To Create A Morning Routine To Set Yourself Up For Success.
You can also apply this rule to the beginning of your working day. Maybe you don’t turn your phone on for the first two hours so that way you can deal with the most important things first.
You will be more present
If you are on your mobile phone you aren’t really present where you are. One of my biggest pet hates is the number of people who bring mobile phones to a meeting. If you are on your phone then you are only half listening and multi-tasking isn’t a high-performance habit. It is much better to be fully presented and committed to the task at hand and then move onto the next thing.
You will free up more time
Phones are a major time sucker, especially if you have an inbox that never gets down to zero or you use social media. In both instances, you can easily get caught scrolling and scrolling and then realise you have lost half an hour. Having your phone off means that isn’t a possibility and you can be using your time wisely to help you be more successful.