3 Ways to Reduce Tech Distractions and Boost Productivity

Next Action Associates (00:05.55)
Hello, everyone. I have some thoughts for you today about getting the most out of your tech. And what got me thinking about this topic was I saw an interview not long ago with Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, and Johnny Ive. And many of you will know Johnny Ive's name as the brain behind an awful lot of what came out of

What kind of came out of Apple over many years, including a lot of their iconic products. And the two of them, you may be aware, are working on, well, we're not quite sure what they're working on. And they're being very cagey about it. So as we understand it, it's going to be something physical, which is going to replace, we believe, some of the core tech in our lives, right? So things like phones, we're not sure. And again, they're being very tight lipped about it.

But one of the things in this interview that really got me thinking was Sam Altman started to talk about how he saw the current tech that we have access to in terms of its limitations. And the way he described engaging with our tech, he was primarily talking about mobile phones and the like, was he said, engaging with it is a bit like going for a wander through Times Square.

If you think about Times Square, whether you've been or whether you've seen videos, it is an environment which is absolutely full of movement and video and color and mean, it's just distractions everywhere. And the point he was making, I think, is that if you have something in mind that you want to do with your tech,

of a particular goal in mind. It's not just I want to open my favorite social app and do some doom scrolling. But no, I've got something in particular that I want to get done. Then how do I do that? And what he's saying was, getting to the point where you've actually engaged with that app is difficult just because there are so many distractions on the way. And I was thinking about this in terms of

Next Action Associates (02:21.908)
How can we, for now anyway, until Johnny Ive and Sam Altman come up with this new thing and we see it hit the market, we're going to be making use of the tech that we have. So how can we be a little bit smarter about it? And I really like this time square analogy. So how can we get rid of some of the time square level distractions, if you will?

So here's some thoughts. Again, this is from my own engagement with my own system and my own ways of working and also in the work that I've done with clients over the last 15 or so years. One of the things that I've gotten really ruthless about over time is I want to reduce the number of distractions that my tech provides me. Now, that goes from

Everything from, if I've got my phone with me at dinner, I put the phone on its face, put it face down. I know that sounds simple and easy, but you'd be surprised how many people end up being distracted by their phones during a meal, when ideally they ought to be engaging with the folks in front of them rather than with their tech. Another example of that, this is maybe a little bit more advanced, I suppose, in a way, is

be really ruthless about what you allow your tech to throw your way by way of notifications. So if a lot of the clients that I've worked with, and I do this in my own work, I really, really jealously guard access to that notification setting. So.

I think on my phone there are maybe three apps that have that setting turned on. And those are only apps where I say to myself, yeah, if something new comes in here, I want to know about it straight away. All of the other apps, no. And by the way, among the apps that have notifications turned off is my email app.

Next Action Associates (04:32.352)
So, and some people would say, well, why? Surely you wanna know if you've got a new email. Well, truth be told, the volume of email that I get in my life, right, many, dozens a day, pretty much ensures that if I go and open my email app, there's gonna be no email there, right? So the fact that I have three new emails or eight new emails or 12 new emails or whatever the number is, that's not terribly helpful, right? So I shut it off, shut the notifications off, as I say, even for my email app.

Another way to help us to, again, avoid the distractions in our tech on the way to whatever it is we were intending to interact with, whichever app we had in mind, to, and this is, again, this is something I've done in my own work and quite a lot of clients seem to have gotten quite a lot out of it. If you look at the home screen of my tech, of my phone,

then what you will find is that I have grouped my apps together by function, by the things they do. And so they're related apps which help me to do a particular thing. So for example, I've got a group called Getting Around. What goes in there? All of my map apps. So if I need help navigating when I'm somewhere that I haven't been before, great. Those are there.

You know, public transportation apps to get around on the trains and the buses and whatever here and here in the area around London. Those are all in there as well. that and that's just one one group. Right. So if my point is I want to I want help navigating, as it were, then that's you know, that's the place that I go. Another group, right. Another group of apps is what I've called Look Up. And what

goes there is anytime what I'm interested in doing is looking up a discrete piece of information, right? My bank balance, right? So my bank app goes there. This sort of belongs in the category of reference material, right? So if there's anything that I need to look up, I can do it using the apps in that group. So you might want to give that a try, right? Try to group the apps by function. And again, what that means is that when you unlock your phone,

Next Action Associates (07:00.066)
you've at least got a fighting chance that you won't be distracted by all of the other apps that you have to scroll through, swipe left and right through your phone. You won't be distracted by those apps as you make your way toward the app that you really wanted to engage with. And I suppose, as I think about all of this, it belongs for me in the category. This is a fundamental idea behind the work that we do. One of the things that I want to try to do for my clients and for myself as well is we want to

try and be kind to our future self. Imagine yourself tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. As your future self is making things happen in the world, how can you set things up so that that happens in the most friction-free way? And all of these things, I suppose, would belong in that category.

So until, again, until this whatever this device is that finally pops out of the labs there with Sam Altman's people and Johnny Ives people, those are some thoughts about how you can use the tech that you've got today in more effective ways. So I hope that was helpful. Please do like and subscribe if you want to hear more from us. And if there's anything that you'd like to hear about in the content that we produce, please do let us know.

I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for being with me. Bye for now.

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