How to make the most of your smartphone to boost work productivity

Ever had to work from your phone alone but have absolutely no idea how to make the most of it? Well, you’re not alone. A lot of times, it can be challenging attending to one’s tasks via phone alone. 

It’s popularly debated that smartphones very easily cause us to be dumber since we waste tons of hours during the day scrolling through social media.

While the above school of thought is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a person cannot make use of their smartphone productively.

Whether it’s to organize a document, send out and receive important work emails, or even create a quick poster for advertisement, there’s so much a person can achieve with their smartphone alone.

So how can one make productive use of their smartphone for work? Simple. By making use of the right applications, and tools on a smartphone and by maintaining discipline in the use of the device.

• Maximize Your Calendar, And Timer

The first step to boosting your productivity is organization. Nothing beats down a person who has their affairs organized. It’s hard to keep track of the various activities one has to attend to on a daily basis.

By maximizing your calendar application and timer, you’ll be able to input each activity of each day, week, and month, into one place. The great thing about most calendar apps is that they usually send notifications and reminders with users.

• Disable Message Notifications

There’s nothing as distracting as having notifications pop-up on one’s screen from instant messages. In fact, it’s been proven through certain research that these notifications have been specially designed to always get the attention of the user.

To overcome this distraction, it is necessary to disable your message notifications as this will boost your productivity. Do not stress over resisting the persistent urge to check your phones now and then. These reflexes are quite normal and will resolve over time. 

• Install Basic Work Tools

Should you want to be productive using your smartphone, it’s a great idea to install the basic working tools. Most applications these days have phone versions optimized to perform excellently on smartphones.

Google Docs, Google Sheets, Zoom, Hangout Meet, Microsoft Teams, Gmail or Yahoo Mail, Canva, Adobe Reader, Photoshop are examples of important professional work tools everyone should have. 

Most work tools are easy to operate and easily synchronize with the main domain account whether it’s a Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft account. This means that all of your files and information on the work tools are centralized.

• Set Up A Screen Off Time

The basics of staying productive while working with a smartphone all boils down to eliminating the distractions. By exercising your mind to take screen breaks several hours of the day.

You can start off by limiting your off-screen time by 20 minutes or lesser [whichever works for you], and then building the amount of time up gradually as your level of discipline increases.

In addition to being more productive, you’ll find that staying off your phone screen for longer actually increases your brain functions as well as preserves your eyesight.

• Constantly Update Your Phone

Want to enjoy the best your smartphone has to offer? Then it’s wise of you to update your phone as constantly as possible.

Smartphones have made application and software updates easier because notifications are recurrently sent to users informing them of available system updates.