A roadblock to productivity is the smartphone on your desk | Hacker News Reader

A roadblock to productivity is the smartphone on your desk

nytimes.com

35 pointsingve12 comments

This is more like papering over the cracks.

Let me tell you a story; I rarely spend time with my uncle nowadays (We are far far away from each other unfortunately). In one of those rare occasions, we sat down and had lunch. It was a delicious food with nice conversation, then his mobile phone rang. He pressed NO. I told him he can talk. He turned me and said "No, I am eating and speding time with you now." This really blew my mind. He really had his priorities and applied them accordingly. He than later on called the guy and said that he was having lunch and meeting me, thus could not talk.

If you dedicate your time to a thing, try to enjoy that time. If you find yourself distracted then it is not the phone that is the problem. Let it distract you.(for real) because it is probably not more important than the notification you got.

In addition to removing the distraction altogether, a friend recently showed me you can put your phone display into "Greyscale" mode.

This has an immediate effect of being less pop-y and engaging. Big red banners are meaningless. The lack of colors make you want to engage less. It truly broke a bunch of odd habits for me.

Worth giving it a shot.

https://gist.github.com/jj1bdx/a514530f4f67a744526644527a12f...

I tried that for a week. Couldn't get used to it. I found that too many apps use color for important distinctions, which they shouldn't because of colorblind people, but it is what it is.

It would be great if apps could know the display is in grayscale mode (perhaps it is?) so they could switch to a more appropriate design.

My Nexus 5x doesn't have option to enable gray-scale, but I tried color correction settings for color blindness. Colors are there, but a bit washed out for Protanomaly. Will see how it goes.

While I fully agree with the article, what exactly is it trying to tell me that everyone didn't know? Is it just saying that your phone is a distraction, and that distractions make it harder to focus? I'm just unsure what part of the article anyone would disagree with.

'The mere presence of your phone — even if it’s powered off, and even if you’re actively and successfully ignoring it — “reduces available cognitive capacity”'.

I thought this was interesting. Our focus is so sensitive that knowing it's within physical proximity is distracting. I bet most people wouldn't have guessed there is a difference between 'in a drawer' and 'in another room'.

Well... My workflow is desktop-centric, I do not use social networks, WhatsApp etc. So... One reason to "hide" my phone is to avoid/reduce data collection via speaker mic (cameras are already covered with a sandwich of insulating tape+tin foil).

Otherwise all I can receive are calls or mail notification at the same rate of dunst notifications so...

IMO a real roadblock to productivity is knowing their desktop, their tools and use them instead of being used by tools OEM...

That’s tough to avoid when you’re a mobile developer for a living. :P

Reddit on my desktop says hello.

I solved that problem by keeping the cats, funny, jokes, etc. on my home computer. My work machine just has technical Reddits that don't require or inspire much response, just a mental note.

sounds great but I'm still expected to monitor slack and email all day.

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