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Yeah so the smartphones and socials can be difficult addictions to shake, but this is the flip side of it: when you do put them aside for an extended period of

Yeah so the smartphones and socials can be difficult addictions to shake, but this is the flip side of it: when you do put them aside for an extended period of time you often see your productivity absolutely go through the roof. I started sticking my phone in my bag or in another room during my afternoon work session and my productivity with that time doubled, in terms of actual output - tasks completed, lines of code written etc. and probably better ideas generated. I started turning it off after dinner as well as running a simple script that blocks FB, Reddit etc. on my desktop - my "productivity" with my evening time also basically doubled, whether it was books read, games played, extra work done, time spent with people who matter, keeping my place cleaner, etc. just more life happening basically. The more hooked you are, the more massive the benefit of quitting cold turkey. Once you see it a couple times the dynamic inverts and it gets harder to go back. From personal experience, yeah of course if you rip the phones out of the kids' hands they're going to experience a variety of improvements... that's what happened when I ripped it out of my own hands. I do find it interesting that this study saw little in cognitive improvements - it was only a 21 day study. I thin they are there but they're a long burn, reading books for instance is a skill that has returned to me but it's been very slow and gradual, I should probably lean even harder into turning off my phone and any short-form socials trash.

card_zero 2y ago
Damn, I should get my smartphone out of the bag and start using it, and develop a TikTok habit. Then I can put it away again, and my productivity will double! Which is to say that I find this claim highly unlikely. You're very lucky to have such immense latent productivity that was just waiting for the smartphone dam to burst.
- madmask 2y ago
  I noticed something similar. Productivity does go up if you don’t replace social media with other forms of entertainment. After a while one gets bored and starts doing more stuff, either work or hobbies
- safety1st 2y ago
  You can choose not to believe me if you want. Yes, turning the phone off doubled my productivity. I can't imagine why you wouldn't believe this, if you've ever had coworkers, and observed them spending half their time on their phone at work. It's a distraction which hampers sustained attention and deeper thinking - as well as eats up actual minutes of time, some raw percentage of your work hours inevitably goes into garbage content on the phone instead. I find the people who are skeptical about the idea that the phone frustrates doing deeper thinking, are often the ones who have never done it. This is why they don't see the value in it.
- 2099miles 2y ago
  I don’t get this comment. Double is common hyperbole, but like do you think tiktok habits don’t degrade other productivity? It’s a known phenomenon that smartphones kill boredom and boredom promotes things like sleeping and productivity.
  - fakedang 2y ago
    Smartphones kill boredom by replacing it with their own productivity killer.
- ArnoVW 2y ago
  Being interrupted by people at your desk is a known productivity issue. Why would phones be different ? When I work at home or during evenings when I can focus for long duration my productivity explodes. I have no issue believing the level of impact.
- andai 2y ago
  You can waste time without a phone and you can do programming fairly productively on a phone (I lived without a laptop for 6 months, did everything in Termux!). But there's a right tool for every job, and the phone is designed to steal your soul (attention), designed to encourage mindless consumption, and interrupt you as often as possible. This is part of a bigger principle I've noticed where I can rely on sheer willpower, or I can simply make a small change to my environment (e.g. move the phone to another room) and that's a much more efficient way to achieve the same result. It's partly about reducing the Temptation, and partly about setting a strong intention / setting a strong message to yourself. If you're serious about getting some real work done, then why are you even looking at your phone? Eventually you can get to the point where wasting time in any way starts to feel gross and you catch yourself more and more, but for most people it takes a bit of recalibration to get there.
mattlondon 2y ago
> books read, games played, So that is positive, but reading and playing games on a phone is negative?
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  I’m not a specialist but I think someone having in its hand the same device they do other activities on, may trigger some habits they have/had on that same device. That doesn’t refrain someone to be productive but not the easiest way.
- safety1st 2y ago
  Yes, I think so. For one thing, reading on a phone is harder and leads to worse retention. The content you consume is likely to be shorter and less intellectually valuable. Maybe more importantly, doing anything on a phone seems to encourage a shorter attention span and switching over to other activities, such as tapping useless notifications and doomscrolling your way into anger, unhappiness, depression, anxiety etc. all generated by content that was designed for mobile users. Books don't do this. I had a feeling someone might pick on the gaming reference here, but what I am saying is that hours of doomscrolling have been replaced by a mix of a half dozen activities, all of which I enjoy more than doomscrolling, and many of which are more useful.
  - mattlondon 2y ago
    Why would reading on a phone be any less intellectually valuable? A book is a book regardless. Just uninstall the social apps and/or turn off notifications if you are easily distracted. It's not rocket science (which incidentally you can learn on a phone if you wanted)
    - lazide 2y ago
      Why would food at McDonalds be any nutritionally less valuable than food at home?! After all, food is food, and there is nothing stopping someone from having home cooked food at a McDonalds.
    - 2y ago
eastbound 2y ago
By do you ruminate negative thoughts? That’s my excuse for keeping my phone playing at night: I’m single, and despite being a successful professional and trying hard at dating when I was younger, my private life is full of bad experiences. I think about it and get angry. Youtube masks it. Yes I’ve seen psychologists but no, really, they try to où the blame on me but every time it’s the others who bullied me. Anyway — without a smartphone keeping your mind busy, how do you mask negative thoughts?
- exe34 2y ago
  embrace them, just refuse to act on them. let the thoughts come in, let them stay, and eventually they go back out. you're left with boredom, which can then be filled with whatever productive things that you enjoy.
  - eastbound 2y ago
    That’s the thing with mental health, sometimes you forget one of the methods to get rid of unhealthy habits, and they might be so simple. Let’s give it a try.
- ArnoVW 2y ago
  Sometimes have the same issue (rumination). I listen to podcasts and youtube science, tech ans history videos (with non exiting voices and without music or other sounds) to block out thoughts. It works. I guess audiobooks should work too. Mind you I keep thinking that I should try meditation to build up my capacity at directing my thoughts, but with everything going on I can't seem to find the time. Using my phone for anything else though (reading, watching videos) have the inverse effect and keep me awake.
- andai 2y ago
  Meditation helped me a lot. You can train yourself to notice when your mind is doing something unpleasant or unproductive. When you notice that, it typically just stops, and you wonder why you were even doing it in the first place. I'd recommend (ironically) an app for that, but the important part is that you practice every day, even if only for a few minutes. Alternatively, being too busy and/or social to spend any time thinking — I joked the other day that I had "backdoored" my way into enlightenment by simply having no time/energy to think. I didnt create that situation on purpose, both aspects are due to poverty (working two jobs and living in shared accomodations) but they've both had powerful unexpected benefits, to the point where I'm not much looking forward to getting my own place and going back to being alone all the time again.
cardanome 2y ago
The problem is that I can not pace myself. I can go cold turkey without any withdrawals. Not using no phone or computer on holidays? Not a problem. It would not be a great sacrifice for me to never touch a computing device ever again in my life. But that using the internet only at certain times thing? Absolutely not. There will always be an exception because I need to look up something really badly and once the exception is done it is over. Restricting certain sites? But then there is that search result or that person linked me something I need to see. Away with the filter! It sucks because as a software engineer I need to keep up with things so there isn't really a way to quit.
- andai 2y ago
  I just had a text file "stuff to Google" and I Googled it later. There was always more work to do so I could either work around it or just do something else for a few hours and come back to it when I went back online. Though most of the stuff was just documentation, so I just downloaded offline docs and reduced the need to Google stuff by an order of magnitude. Of course, it's going to depend on what you're doing (I assume it works better for solo work) and what kind of resources are available.
andai 2y ago
Yeah, in my case the benefits were dramatic because I'm easily distracted and lose track of time. So I was like, I'm just going to eliminate all possible distractions. I found that very helpful. Another effect was that I started to become somewhat more productive during times when I did have access to my phone, or rather, more reluctant to start wasting time even if the option was easily available to me.

card_zero 2y ago

Damn, I should get my smartphone out of the bag and start using it, and develop a TikTok habit. Then I can put it away again, and my productivity will double! Which is to say that I find this claim highly unlikely. You're very lucky to have such immense latent productivity that was just waiting for the smartphone dam to burst.

madmask 2y ago
I noticed something similar. Productivity does go up if you don’t replace social media with other forms of entertainment. After a while one gets bored and starts doing more stuff, either work or hobbies
safety1st 2y ago
You can choose not to believe me if you want. Yes, turning the phone off doubled my productivity. I can't imagine why you wouldn't believe this, if you've ever had coworkers, and observed them spending half their time on their phone at work. It's a distraction which hampers sustained attention and deeper thinking - as well as eats up actual minutes of time, some raw percentage of your work hours inevitably goes into garbage content on the phone instead. I find the people who are skeptical about the idea that the phone frustrates doing deeper thinking, are often the ones who have never done it. This is why they don't see the value in it.
2099miles 2y ago
I don’t get this comment. Double is common hyperbole, but like do you think tiktok habits don’t degrade other productivity? It’s a known phenomenon that smartphones kill boredom and boredom promotes things like sleeping and productivity.
- fakedang 2y ago
  Smartphones kill boredom by replacing it with their own productivity killer.
ArnoVW 2y ago
Being interrupted by people at your desk is a known productivity issue. Why would phones be different ? When I work at home or during evenings when I can focus for long duration my productivity explodes. I have no issue believing the level of impact.
andai 2y ago
You can waste time without a phone and you can do programming fairly productively on a phone (I lived without a laptop for 6 months, did everything in Termux!). But there's a right tool for every job, and the phone is designed to steal your soul (attention), designed to encourage mindless consumption, and interrupt you as often as possible. This is part of a bigger principle I've noticed where I can rely on sheer willpower, or I can simply make a small change to my environment (e.g. move the phone to another room) and that's a much more efficient way to achieve the same result. It's partly about reducing the Temptation, and partly about setting a strong intention / setting a strong message to yourself. If you're serious about getting some real work done, then why are you even looking at your phone? Eventually you can get to the point where wasting time in any way starts to feel gross and you catch yourself more and more, but for most people it takes a bit of recalibration to get there.

mattlondon 2y ago

> books read, games played, So that is positive, but reading and playing games on a phone is negative?

aziaziazi 2y ago
I’m not a specialist but I think someone having in its hand the same device they do other activities on, may trigger some habits they have/had on that same device. That doesn’t refrain someone to be productive but not the easiest way.
safety1st 2y ago
Yes, I think so. For one thing, reading on a phone is harder and leads to worse retention. The content you consume is likely to be shorter and less intellectually valuable. Maybe more importantly, doing anything on a phone seems to encourage a shorter attention span and switching over to other activities, such as tapping useless notifications and doomscrolling your way into anger, unhappiness, depression, anxiety etc. all generated by content that was designed for mobile users. Books don't do this. I had a feeling someone might pick on the gaming reference here, but what I am saying is that hours of doomscrolling have been replaced by a mix of a half dozen activities, all of which I enjoy more than doomscrolling, and many of which are more useful.
- mattlondon 2y ago
  Why would reading on a phone be any less intellectually valuable? A book is a book regardless. Just uninstall the social apps and/or turn off notifications if you are easily distracted. It's not rocket science (which incidentally you can learn on a phone if you wanted)
  - lazide 2y ago
    Why would food at McDonalds be any nutritionally less valuable than food at home?! After all, food is food, and there is nothing stopping someone from having home cooked food at a McDonalds.
  - 2y ago

eastbound 2y ago

By do you ruminate negative thoughts? That’s my excuse for keeping my phone playing at night: I’m single, and despite being a successful professional and trying hard at dating when I was younger, my private life is full of bad experiences. I think about it and get angry. Youtube masks it. Yes I’ve seen psychologists but no, really, they try to où the blame on me but every time it’s the others who bullied me. Anyway — without a smartphone keeping your mind busy, how do you mask negative thoughts?

exe34 2y ago
embrace them, just refuse to act on them. let the thoughts come in, let them stay, and eventually they go back out. you're left with boredom, which can then be filled with whatever productive things that you enjoy.
- eastbound 2y ago
  That’s the thing with mental health, sometimes you forget one of the methods to get rid of unhealthy habits, and they might be so simple. Let’s give it a try.
ArnoVW 2y ago
Sometimes have the same issue (rumination). I listen to podcasts and youtube science, tech ans history videos (with non exiting voices and without music or other sounds) to block out thoughts. It works. I guess audiobooks should work too. Mind you I keep thinking that I should try meditation to build up my capacity at directing my thoughts, but with everything going on I can't seem to find the time. Using my phone for anything else though (reading, watching videos) have the inverse effect and keep me awake.
andai 2y ago
Meditation helped me a lot. You can train yourself to notice when your mind is doing something unpleasant or unproductive. When you notice that, it typically just stops, and you wonder why you were even doing it in the first place. I'd recommend (ironically) an app for that, but the important part is that you practice every day, even if only for a few minutes. Alternatively, being too busy and/or social to spend any time thinking — I joked the other day that I had "backdoored" my way into enlightenment by simply having no time/energy to think. I didnt create that situation on purpose, both aspects are due to poverty (working two jobs and living in shared accomodations) but they've both had powerful unexpected benefits, to the point where I'm not much looking forward to getting my own place and going back to being alone all the time again.

cardanome 2y ago

The problem is that I can not pace myself. I can go cold turkey without any withdrawals. Not using no phone or computer on holidays? Not a problem. It would not be a great sacrifice for me to never touch a computing device ever again in my life. But that using the internet only at certain times thing? Absolutely not. There will always be an exception because I need to look up something really badly and once the exception is done it is over. Restricting certain sites? But then there is that search result or that person linked me something I need to see. Away with the filter! It sucks because as a software engineer I need to keep up with things so there isn't really a way to quit.

andai 2y ago
I just had a text file "stuff to Google" and I Googled it later. There was always more work to do so I could either work around it or just do something else for a few hours and come back to it when I went back online. Though most of the stuff was just documentation, so I just downloaded offline docs and reduced the need to Google stuff by an order of magnitude. Of course, it's going to depend on what you're doing (I assume it works better for solo work) and what kind of resources are available.

andai 2y ago

Yeah, in my case the benefits were dramatic because I'm easily distracted and lose track of time. So I was like, I'm just going to eliminate all possible distractions. I found that very helpful. Another effect was that I started to become somewhat more productive during times when I did have access to my phone, or rather, more reluctant to start wasting time even if the option was easily available to me.