Boost Your Productivity: How to Fight Technology Creep and Overcome Information Overload

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Busyness Is Not Productivity

The internet has no ending, so is it a battle we won’t win? Not necessarily. We just have to be intentional and vigilant about our use of our devices and time.

There is always new information whenever we get onto the internet. And we’re consuming 300 times more data than just 10 years ago.

The important thing to remember is that busy is not a proxy for productivity. And email and messaging is always someone else’s agenda for us. Here are a few strategies to predict, mitigate and eliminate distractions. Read along.

Predict Them

Become self-aware. Why don’t you stay on task? Is it boredom or difficulty? Is it the tedious task or is it the tempting screen that shows what’s next on Netflix?

Take stock. Did you know today, an average person consumes 174 newspapers worth of information in day? Do you really need all that junk in your life?

Step back and analyze all the tasks that have your undivided attention and those tasks where you’re struggling to keep your focus up.

Have you been multitasking too much lately? Learn about attention residue and the cost of constantly switching tasks and its effects on personal growth and productivity. Are you doing deep work for long durations or doing shallow work for short durations?

Set expectations with your friends and family. Communicate beforehand that you’ll be out of pocket for a period of time. Create auto responders for emails.

Mitigate Them

Save space in your brain by not having to remember small but important things that can wait. Use brain extending techniques.

Treat yourself to sudden urges and instant cravings by creating a rewarding system. Tell yourself, if I can just hold off on that ice-cream craving just a little longer, I can enjoy it more peacefully because I’ll done with what I’m doing.

Think ahead. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment you will feel once you’ve completed the task at hand. That sensation can be a huge motivator.

If you’ve a tendency to procrastinate, understand why you’re falling victim to that. Is the project something you don’t understand or is it too time consuming? Either way, split it into manageable bite sized chunks and tackle it.

Finally, don’t over think, just do it. There’s a reason why an enduring brand has it tag line after this concept.

Eliminate Them

Control your environment. Take away the temptations. Remove any and all distracting stimuli around you. Remove apps that are the major distractors and remove easy access to them. Disable notifications for news.

Don’t be enslaved to your phone. These powerful machines in our machines that we seem to have control over actually carry a lot of cyber dust with them.

Avoid decision fatigue. It is a productivity killer. Stop making too many small decisions that constantly use up brain resources. Think of decisions as a limited number of marbles in a jar that you have for any given day. Use them wisely.

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Truth About Technology

Going out for dinner, calling your mom or going to a party used to be about talking to people, about conversation. But during the last ten years something has shifted. Instead of talking about the food, we post a picture of it online; instead of calling our mother, we send her an email updating her on our lives; and at the party we’re busy showing other people YouTube clips and messaging with friends at a bar instead of talking to other people there. In short, face-to-face conversation is nowhere to be found.

~ Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle