Startup Guides > Use Your Smartphone To Be 30% More Productive At Work

Have you heard? Some companies are banning the use of smartphones at work because it's easy to lose precious hours playing games and goofing around on your smartphone or tablet. Such distractions can kill your focus and productivity.

But you don't need to turn off your phone or chuck it out a window to get more work done. From scaling back your notifications to timing your tasks, try these 4 tips for using a smartphone to boost your productivity by up to 30% and reach your business goals:

1) Turn off your notifications.

Your smartphone and many of its apps are designed to grab your attention with various types of notifications, including icons that appear in your phone's status bar, sounds, flashing lights and vibrations.


Whenever your phone notifies you of something, you might not need to immediately respond. Consider whether that alert really deserves your attention. If not, take a moment to figure out whether you can turn that notification off.

To do this, check the settings for the app that's generating that alert, and either turn off all notifications or choose to be notified by e-mail rather than through a status bar icon and sound or vibration.

2) Track your goals.

There are a number of mobile to-do list tools, but these may fuel distraction by reminding you of all the "busy work" that's available to dive into.

If your to-do list doesn't seem to help you focus, try tracking goals instead of, or in addition to, your tasks or projects.

What's the difference? A task might be "Contact client about overdue invoice." A goal would be "earn $15,000 in sales this month." You may find that setting a goal for a certain time period and tracking progress toward it boosts your motivation.

Experiment with various goal-tracking apps to find one that motivates you to act. It helps to keep your goals as simple and concrete as possible.

If you end up using both a goal tracker app and a task manager app, don't duplicate your tracking efforts and create more busy work.

3) Keep track of your mood.

If you're stressed, depressed, frustrated, bored or worried, it can be harder to get things done. Apps that help you track your moods can spot patterns and find ways to keep your mental and emotional outlook positive and ready for action.

When using these mood-tracking apps you can usually choose a term that describes your mood from a list of options and specify how long you have felt that way. You can also note what you think triggered that mood, what you were doing at the time or where you were and whom you were with. Some also let you track factors that may relate to mood, such as the time you ate or your sleep patterns.

The apps then provide tools to help you spot patterns. For instance: "Wow, every night I sleep less than seven hours, I feel grumpy the next morning and don't get much done."

4) Time your tasks.

Time management alone rarely increases productivity, but it can help. A simple stopwatch app can help you stick to task schedules or tackle big projects a little bit at a time.

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