42 | How Changing Two Settings on my Phone Changed my Life

Calls with Chris Smith

Changing two settings on my phone increased my focus, my productivity, and improved my personal relationships. If you don’t control your phone, your phone will control you. So, I’m going to share two settings that I want all of you to change. It took me less than two minutes to make this change and I estimate about a 10X increase in productivity since I’ve done it.

This first setting I changed — and this one’s big — is you need to disable audio and vibration alerts for text messages. People spend an average of 145 minutes a day on their phone and will use it 76 times per day. If you’re calculating that for a 16 hour day, that means you’re checking your phone 5 times an hour — that’s every 12 minutes! So because we check our phones so often we don’t need our phones to tell us when to check it — we do it automatically. When you are interrupted by an unnecessary distraction, it takes 25 minutes to refocus and get back into the swing of things. So I want to challenge you to try this: Turn off audio and vibration notifications.

The other big setting I changed is turning off all other alerts. The only thing I have on for an alert is the little badge icon where it shows that there is a number. I know it’s nice if someone tags you on a post on Facebook — but how many times are you going to check Facebook today anyways? I know it’s nice to get a push alert when your favorite team won their game — but aren’t you going to check ESPN later anyways? So for me personally, I only include badge app icons for the apps that I use on a daily basis. When there’s a banner or box alert that pushes up, on to your phone, it gives a lot context and makes you want to check and read it. But when you just see the little red number on the icon of your app, it isn’t nearly as distracting. So right now on my phone, I have zero push alerts on my phone — zero.

These are small changes that can net you big results — Just try it for a couple of weeks. Not only will you thank me a week from now; the people around you will thank you! Being less digitally distracted improves your work focus, and it deepens your personal relationships. This is seriously a game changer.

Bonus Pro-Tips:

• During the holidays or on a vacation, uninstall slack and your email app — or any work apps that you use the most. Make it as hard as possible to go into those apps. When you love what you do, it’s hard to follow these rules, but not seeing the apps at all can be super helpful when you’re spending significant time with your family and friends.

• Do a digital purge; a digital detox. Every December I spend a few hours going on to all the social media accounts that I use, and unfollow, unfriend, and turn off notifications for hundreds of people that I don’t want in my newsfeed ever again. I also go into my inbox and unsubscribe from all the emails that I always end up deleting. Unfollow all of those negative Nancys and twitter accounts that piss you off. It’s your newsfeed — you can control it.

In closing, there’s a saying that I learned while I was working at Quicken Loans, it goes:

“What you focus on, is what you find.”

My goal and my challenge to you is: let’s all focus on finding focus in a world where everyone else is digitally distracted.