by Sean Devlin, Front Rush
So for iPhone users, it turns out that there is a productivity button that comes standard with the device. Its free, it doesn’t require any downloads, it’s amazing and I found it. The way I found it came from a sleepless night where I had an early morning flight. You know those nights. You try to get to bed early but it turns out that the one night you need sleep, it just won’t happen. And of course every single time I was just about to fall asleep that night, I would get a text message or an email and my device would vibrate and I would wake up. Then of course, when it seemed that it was finally going to happen, I got a phone call from an old friend and my sleepless night ended literally with no sleep.
So what is the button and why does it matter? Well, if you put your finger at the bottom of your screen and swipe up, a sub menu appears. At the top of the menu there is an icon of a moon and it is the ‘sleep’ or ‘do not disturb’ mode. Basically any text message, email, call, etc won’t cause your device to ring or vibrate or light up or anything. It’s not that you don’t get them, they just don’t make your phone do anything until you check them.
So after I found this button, I started hitting it before bed every night and my sleepless night became just a single historical event. Then when I’d wake up, I would turn the sleep mode off and go about business as usual. But then a weird thing happened. I forgot to turn it off. I didn’t get any calls, messages, emails or anything for hours. My phone didn’t ring and even though the messages came in, I was essentially unavailable and something even weirder happened. The things I intended to get done that day, got done. The normal, continuous distraction of my iPhone was irrelevant and productivity happened at my pace. Multi-tasking is a myth and I didn’t need to do it. Instead, I was singularly focused and knocking stuff out.
Then the iteration happened. Clearly you can’t keep your phone in sleep mode at all times…that defeats the purpose. Instead, what I do is I turn it on for an hour at a time. That hour is the productive hour where no distractions (at least from my phone) can occur. At the end of the hour, if I choose, I’ll turn it off and check my messages, email, or whatever. The reality is that less and less am I choosing to turn it off. Instead I am allocating times throughout the day to check my device instead of it continuously checking me. The result has been increased productivity through better focus and less distraction
Sean Devlin is the lead technical architect of the popular contact management database, Front Rush. Yes, they can help you produce branded, graphic-rich email templates to use with your prospects. But that’s just the tip of the giant Front Rush iceberg! Visit Front Rush online for a complete rundown of their awesomeness, and find out why they are the #1 choice of college coaches around the country.