Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #122| Why Your Phone Is Hurting Your Productivity (And How to Fix It)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: I feel like phones have the potential to be our greatest productivity tool and also our biggest distraction.
- 0:12Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:19Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:24Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:39Michelle Gauthier: Hey friends, if I sound like I have a little bit of a cold today, I think it's just spring allergies, so pardon my less than ideal voice this week.
- 0:47Michelle Gauthier: I'm happy to report, though, that we have had some warm and sunny temperatures in St Louis, and I've had the windows open, which is probably causing allergies, but I don't even care because I'm so happy for the sun.
- 0:58Michelle Gauthier: But I digress.
- 0:59Michelle Gauthier: Okay, here's what we're here to talk about today.
- 1:02Michelle Gauthier: I was pondering the other day as I was using my phone at my daughter's horse lesson and it ended up dying when I still had like 20 minutes left to wait for her.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: If anyone's kid out there does horse lessons, you know that it is a several hour endeavor, like I am gone for four hours.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: You have to get there early and get all these things done and then you do the actual lesson and then you have to undo all the things for the horse and blah, blah.
- 1:27Michelle Gauthier: But anyway, I spend a lot of time waiting and I try to be productive during the time that I'm just sitting in the car waiting for her, and I use my phone all the time, and I was marveling at all of the things that we can do on our phone.
- 1:43Michelle Gauthier: I mean, I can essentially do my entire job on my phone if I had to.
- 1:47Michelle Gauthier: I'd prefer not to, but I could if I had to.
- 1:49Michelle Gauthier: But then on the flip side, you can just totally waste so much time.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: I'm sure we can all think of someone right now in our mind who we spend a lot of time with, who's basically addicted to their phone and is constantly picking it up and is not present, and maybe that person is you, or maybe it's somebody who you spend a lot of time with.
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: But I feel like phones have the potential to be our greatest productivity tool and also our biggest distraction.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: So what I want to talk about today is how to make your phone work for you in a good way.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to talk about how you can transform your phone from a distraction machine into a focus machine, and we'll do a quick reality check on your phone habits and I'll give you three easy ways to make your phone work for you and not against you.
- 2:38Michelle Gauthier: So first of all, let's think about how often are you using your phone?
- 2:42Michelle Gauthier: I would bet that 100% of people think they use their phone less than they actually use their phone.
- 2:48Michelle Gauthier: It's funny if you have an iPhone you can check under screen time, like settings, screen time, and apparently, if you have an Android I don't have one, but I looked this up for you Android people there's a digital wellbeing where you can look and see how much time you're actually spending on your phone.
- 3:05Michelle Gauthier: So I went to go check this for myself and it wasn't turned on, like the feature wasn't turned on.
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: So I turned it on because I knew I was going to do a podcast on this.
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: I don't have like a long history that I can share with you, but I can tell you for sure today and the day is almost done now but I have picked up my phone 99 times and if you would have asked me, I mean literally 99, like I looked at the setting on the phone, sounds like just a number I'd make up, but for real that was it.
- 3:31Michelle Gauthier: And if you would have asked me how many times did I pick up my phone today, I would have said like 30 maybe so I think that we are unconsciously a lot of times picking up our phone.
- 3:44Michelle Gauthier: I notice it in other people.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: In fact, I kind of called out the handsome man friend on this and he's like, you totally do it too, and I don't think he was wrong.
- 3:52Michelle Gauthier: I just think it's easier to notice about other people.
- 3:55Michelle Gauthier: Anytime there's a moment of silence, you're just picking up your phone.
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: So the first thing that I recommend that you do is just to see how often you're actually using your phone and, if you dare, ask your kids or your significant other how much time you think you're spending on your phone, and then you'll also be able to see in there your most used apps.
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: Are they helping you or are they just keeping you busy?
- 4:17Michelle Gauthier: Like, for example, today I spent two hours on social media.
- 4:20Michelle Gauthier: I would say for me, about an hour of that is legitimate work and another hour is just, you know, checking on stuff, scrolling through reels, whatever.
- 4:30Michelle Gauthier: So once you figure out how you're spending your time on your phone and if you like that because let's just say I picked up my phone 99 times today and it was all related to you know things that were productive for me and things that I wanted to do.
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: Do I really need to be picking it up that much?
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: In general, I mean, that just feels like so much.
- 4:52Michelle Gauthier: Anyway, you have the opportunity to do a couple things to really make your phone more of a productivity tool.
- 4:59Michelle Gauthier: The first one is optimize your phone for focus, not for distractions.
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: Everyone knows, like my family, if you really need to get a hold of me, just call me twice and then it will actually ring, because otherwise I won't see it.
- 5:20Michelle Gauthier: And when I'm coaching my clients, my phone is near me but it's turned upside down because I don't even want to see it.
- 5:27Michelle Gauthier: Like if somebody's calling or whatever, it doesn't matter, I'm not going to answer and I just don't want to be distracted.
- 5:32Michelle Gauthier: So where can you turn off the notifications?
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: And think about if you've got an Apple Watch too.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: One of my clients was telling me that she was doing a good job at putting her phone in the other room and I said that is good because that was something she was working on.
- 5:46Michelle Gauthier: I'm like what about the watch?
- 5:47Michelle Gauthier: She's like well, I haven't taken the watch off yet.
- 5:49Michelle Gauthier: So I feel like if the phone's not distracting you, the watch could be distracting you.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: I actually got rid of my Apple Watch.
- 5:57Michelle Gauthier: For that reason it's like I don't really need to know 24-7.
- 6:00Michelle Gauthier: So think about what works for you.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: Turn off all the non-essential notifications and you're in charge of how often you pick it up and how often you look at it.
- 6:11Michelle Gauthier: Then the other tip is to rearrange your home screen so put your productivity things front and center, like your calendar, your note, the focus timer, and then make the time wasting apps.
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: You can set time limits on them.
- 6:25Michelle Gauthier: You can put them on the second or third screen so you have to scroll to get to them and then utilize the settings on the phone where you can be on do not disturb or focus mode during work hours and at night, so you're not constantly being interrupted.
- 6:40Michelle Gauthier: The other thing that I recommend is to evaluate if you're using your phone first thing in the morning, if that works for you.
- 6:46Michelle Gauthier: I've written articles on this before and I've had people come up to me and say what I just really enjoy that time in the morning.
- 6:53Michelle Gauthier: That's kind of my chill time and I like to look at my phone first.
- 6:56Michelle Gauthier: So if it works for you, that's cool.
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: But if you end up just scrolling and then you just get sort of that yucky feeling, consider just, I know most of us use our phone for an alarm.
- 7:08Michelle Gauthier: So turning off the alarm on your phone and then going and doing something else Like my requirement for myself is before I play around on the phone.
- 7:15Michelle Gauthier: This does not include weekends.
- 7:17Michelle Gauthier: On weekends I love to lay in bed and just scroll through reels and, you know, do mindless things.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: I like it.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: I enjoy it.
- 7:23Michelle Gauthier: It's part of my fun time.
- 7:24Michelle Gauthier: But during the week, when I have to get up and get going, I have to drink a full glass of water and do my journaling before I use my phone.
- 7:33Michelle Gauthier: So you could make up a rule like that for yourself.
- 7:36Michelle Gauthier: If you feel like it doesn't serve you to use your phone first thing, you could even put it in another room.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: One of my clients was trying not to use her phone at night and she found it really hard when it was on her bedside table.
- 7:47Michelle Gauthier: So we had the funniest conversation because she's like I don't mind putting it in another room, but how am I going to wake up?
- 7:52Michelle Gauthier: So she had to buy an old school alarm clock.
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: I only ever see those anymore in hotels.
- 7:58Michelle Gauthier: So you can think about a solution like that for yourself if you feel like it's really distracting you, to have it at your bedside table in the morning and then think about how you can use your phone as a productivity tool to get more things done.
- 8:11Michelle Gauthier: Something that I like to do is use the voice memos when I have ideas for things.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: If I'm driving, I'll use the voice memos to like record ideas for an email I want to send out or a podcast idea that I have.
- 8:25Michelle Gauthier: You can also use the timers and the reminders and the calendar to set up time blocking type things to say I'm going to work on only this for 20 minutes.
- 8:35Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to set a.
- 8:36Michelle Gauthier: So there are lots of ways that you can really make your phone work for you.
- 8:46Michelle Gauthier: So, in summary, look at how you're using your phone and see if you like it.
- 8:49Michelle Gauthier: Then think about optimizing your phone to reduce distractions.
- 8:53Michelle Gauthier: I know some people who get notifications on their Facebook and their Instagram and LinkedIn and all this stuff and that your phone is just constantly dinging and our bodies respond to that like it's some sort of emergency, when it's clearly not.
- 9:07Michelle Gauthier: And then we talked about trying to use the phone for true productivity.
- 9:12Michelle Gauthier: The biggest thing I use mine for is the timer when I'm just doing really focused time trying to work on something.
- 9:18Michelle Gauthier: So, for today, make just one little change.
- 9:22Michelle Gauthier: Whether it's silencing your notifications, moving your apps to another screen, checking your screen time, whatever it is, make one little change.
- 9:26Michelle Gauthier: Whether it's silencing your notifications, moving your apps to another screen, checking your screen time, whatever it is, make one little change and see if you can make your phone work for you instead of against you.
- 9:36Michelle Gauthier: Speaking of phones, if your phone is in your hand right now because you're listening to this podcast, I would love if you would rate the podcast and write a review.
- 9:43Michelle Gauthier: That would be amazing if you would take a minute to do that.
- 9:45Michelle Gauthier: And I would love if you would rate the podcast and write a review.
- 9:46Michelle Gauthier: That would be amazing if you would take a minute to do that.
- 9:47Michelle Gauthier: And I would also love to hear from you.
- 9:49Michelle Gauthier: Remember, on Thursdays, I can also answer listener questions.
- 9:53Michelle Gauthier: So if you send me a message in the show notes, there's just a link there that says send me a message.
- 9:58Michelle Gauthier: If you send me a message, you will DM me on Instagram and tell me what kind of questions you have and what kind of podcast you'd like to see.
- 10:05Michelle Gauthier: I love to answer your questions.
- 10:12Michelle Gauthier: All right, have a great week.
- 10:17Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 10:20Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 10:22Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 10:23Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.