Here’s how your smartphone is affecting your productivity at work

Digital revolution that was intended to make our work easier ended up being a hurdle instead. It’s not that smartphones are entirely evil, but the users often forget how to draw a line. Smartphones make everything easier in our lives, from ordering food to navigating. But what happens when you go overboard with everything? This is when the smartphone decreases productivity at work. A recent study has confirmed that the use of smartphone in offices is lowering down our productivity. Surprisingly, there are more than one ways our smartphone drives our attention away from work.

Smartphone during working hours breaks the flow

When you’re deeply immersed in a task, where is your smartphone kept? Most of the people keep their smartphone on their desk. Kept at such a position, they demand immediate attention. Even if you’re neck-deep in work, you will feel an instant urge to check your social media notifications. Isn’t it? That’s how smartphone keeps our attention away from important tasks at hand. Hence, these tiny menaces distracts from entering a state of flow.

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FYI: While you may take a five minutes break to check social media, it takes around 25 minutes to regain your focus.

Reduced conversation with colleagues

It’s important for you to maintain a conversation with your co-workers. People these days are so addicted to talking over texts and calls that they tend to escape the real-time conversations. This alters the relationships in office and decreases networking. In this way, smartphone decreases productivity at work.

Constant buzzing of smartphone decreases productivity

Every time you check your smartphone, you tend to break your focus from the task in hand. This makes you more prone to committing errors. You are stuck in a social media spiral hence almost forgetting about the work that needs to be done. Too many smartphone notifications can take your attention away from work; hence you end up making more errors and consume more time to complete a task.

Diminishing boundary between personal and professional life

When your smartphone is kept staring at your face demanding attention, you are definitely going to check your social media accounts. Even at work, you cannot resist the temptation to check the notification of a text message someone has just sent you. When you’ve already read the message, you’re also going to type a reply. Also, smartphone blurs the boundary between personal and professional life. Employees tend to bring their personal baggage to the office and end up putting the task at hand on the backburner.

However, it’s hard to argue that we would be better off without smartphones. This is because our phones are also used for our professional work like making important phone calls or typing a work email remotely. But it is important to understand how much of smartphone use is too much.