Skip to main content

Want to be more productive at work? Leave your smartphone at home


I never considered myself a smartphone addict, but it is true that I waste a lot of time checking my phone and responding to personal emails and messages. According to studies [1] and [2], the average user checks the smartphone 80 times per day for 2.42 hours and touches the display 5427 times per day. These figures might seem very high, but I tracked my smartphone usage with BreakFree for one week and they are surprisingly accurate.
A couple of years ago I started using the Pomodoro Technique at work, which blocks smartphone notifications and some websites during the work intervals (25 minutes) and allows you to check them during the scheduled breaks (5 minutes after each work interval). This really helped me be more productive but it requires self-discipline that sometimes I don't have.

What if you really can't check your smartphone, personal email or social media because you don't have access to it? A few weeks ago I started the following experiment:
  1. Activate two-step verification for my Google account
  2. Activate login approvals for my Facebook account
  3. Activate login verification for my Twitter account
  4. Activate two-step verification for my Linkedin account
  5. Give my family a phone number where they can reach you at work in case of emergency
  6. Leave my smartphone at home and go to work
It is difficult to explain how vulnerable and insecure I felt the first time I left my phone at home... but after a few weeks the results have been incredibly positive.

I cannot check my personal email, Whatsapp or social media because after enabling two-factor authentication I need my smartphone for it. As a result, I don't get distracted by notifications every few minutes and I don't proactively use these services. In other words, I can focus on work, increasing my productivity.

When I get home in the evening I receive all the notifications at a time and respond to them all within 20-30 minutes, helping me save over 2 hours a day. that I devote to more enriching activities.

In addition, people don't expect me to be always reachable anymore, giving me a wonderful feeling of freedom.

 Another positive side-effect is that your accounts will be protected from unauthorised access by using two-factor authentication.

Popular posts from this blog

How to disable cookies on Google Analytics so that you don't need a consent banner

The integration of Google Analytics into a website or blog is not GDPR-compliant by default . You must first obtain explicit consent of the end-users to store cookies, describing in your privacy policy how you intend to use collected personal data. This is the reason why most websites nowadays display an annoying (but necessary) consent banner. If you fail to do so or if you only ask for implicit consent, you are at risk of being fined. However, it is possible to disable cookies on Google Analytics (GA) respecting end-users privacy, so that you don't need to ask for consent. The downside is that you will not be able to distinguish the type of user (unique vs new vs returning) and you will miss some session insights. If these details are not relevant for you, here is how you do it. Disable Google Analytics cookies on a custom website If you have a custom website with full access to the source code, you can simply insert the script below between the <head>  and </head>...
Read more

How to convert a PWA into an Android app in 5 minutes

In early 2021 I developed a memory game called Kobadoo  as a PWA (Progressive Web App) using ReactJS. It works pretty well as a browser game and gets decent traffic, but I wanted to reach more potential users by making it available on the official mobile app marketplaces. Since I didn't want to spend any time coding a native app, the easiest solution I found was to convert the PWA into a TWA (Trusted Web Activities) app. It barely takes 5 minutes to do it. TWA essentially allows you to easily create an Android app ( .apk file) that displays a full-screen browser view of your PWA. The user experience is almost identical to a web app and the views from the TWA will count as traffic on your web app. This means that if you have ads on your PWA, they will still work (and generate revenue) from the TWA. Another advantage is that every update you make on the PWA will be immediately reflected on the TWA without the need to submit a new version on Google Play. Here's how I convert...
Read more

How to jump to time offsets in HTML5 video

Let's say that you have a 30-minute WEBM video file, from which you just want to play the following video segments , jumping from one to the other automatically  without interruptions : [00:01:25.00 - 00:02:25.00] -> from second 85 to 145 [00:11:40.00 - 00:11:55.00] -> from second 700 to 715 [00:20:26.00 - 00:21:07.00] -> from second 1226 to 1267 [00:26:11.00 - 00:28:01.00] -> from second 1571 to 1681 To increase the complexity, let's think that you have these video segments in a PHP variable $arrayVideoSegments  (normally the case if they were retrieved from the database).   $arrayVideoSegments[0]->startTime = 85   $arrayVideoSegments[0]->endTime = 145   $arrayVideoSegments[1]->startTime = 700   $arrayVideoSegments[1]->endTime = 715   $arrayVideoSegments[2]->startTime = 1226   $arrayVideoSegments[2]->endTime = 1267   $arrayVideoSegments[3]->startTime = 1571   $arrayVid...
Read more