People look at their smart phones an average of once every six minutes. I recently heard from Nelson Searcy at a conference, “phones are the new weapons of mass distraction.”
In many ways, smarts phones increase our productivity. We can email, connect, plan, take notes, read, and sync most every aspect of life. However, if given opportunity, our phones will carry us down the road of business without effectiveness. Phones tempt us to become sidetracked. But, since it’s not practical to given them up, we must learn how to manage our time with them. Here are five ways to get started:
1. Work on your most important tasks without phone interruptions.
2. Don’t have your phone on during important meetings.
3. Don’t allow your phone to become a distraction during personal conversations.
4. Set your phone aside for a while each evening while you are visiting with friends or family. Don’t trade time with your spouse or kids for time on your phone.
5. Physically turn off or put your phone away for certain periods during the day so you are able to reorder priorities.
With smart phones, we can get into the bad habit of reacting instead of responding. We see email all day. We get texts every hour. And we react to everything as if it’s an immediate need. Take time to process. Carefully respond, don’t react. If it’s helpful, set aside certain times each day to respond to communication, instead of little bits of distraction all day long.
If Satan can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy, and that’s just about the same thing.
~ James Dobson
Hurry is not of the Devil; hurry is the Devil.
~ Carl Jung
OTHER POSTS…
Can smartphones dull our sensitivity to God’s voice?
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