How breaking my phone addiction made me a better entrepreneur and 10x’d my productivity

cgomez

New member
As entrepreneurs, we all know the most important thing is speed and focus.

But I used to significantly struggle with my productivity and focus when it came to my business. I would start the week by planning out all of the tasks I wanted to get done for the week and start out strong, but then eventually, I’d somehow get sidetracked or lose motivation. By the end of the week, I hadn’t made nearly as much progress as I wanted to.

As a solo founder, this was an existential problem for me. I became super frustrated by the lack of progress in my business, but I also knew I could do better if I learned how to become more productive, so I did a deep dive into how to maintain productivity and focus throughout the week.

After trying many things, I found the single best thing you can do to maintain your productivity, mental clarity, and motivation is to get off your phone.

After looking into the research it became clear. Scrolling on your phone not only wastes time, but it elicits a tremendous amount of dopamine.

Dopamine is known as the “motivator” chemical because it’s the mechanism behind all of our motivations. When you scroll, you become overstimulated with dopamine, raising your baseline.

And once this happens, all your brain wants to do is maintain that baseline, otherwise, you’ll feel like shit - it’s just your biology. So tasks that don’t elicit as much dopamine as scrolling (basically everything productive in your life) become borderline unbearable. Scrolling literally zaps your motivation.

Once I broke my phone addiction, I instantly became 10x more productive and I just had way more energy to actually make progress in my business. Reducing your screen time is hard, but I was able to go from 7+hours per day to Accessibility>Display & Text>Color Filters>Grayscale
[*]Turn off all non-human notifications. All apps today use countless notifications to keep us engaged, but most are pointless and just distract us. A good rule of thumb is if it wasn’t sent by a human, disable them.
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@cgomez Weird reading this on Reddit.
But you’re right, I’ve slowly been limiting myself phone use at work or while hanging out with the kids.
I catch myself checking sales all the time, then that turns into scrolling Reddit, then Facebook/Instagram.
Next thing I know I’ve lost an hour,
 
@yochanagrace I already quite my phone, so I use my computer only, for work.

And guess what, same addiction but with my computer now.

But I can't just put my computer away since I need it for work.

Any tips?
 
@theflagen430297 This solution isn’t for everybody, but it worked for me:
Dual-boot your computer. In my case I already had Windows, so I added Linux in the Pop!_OS flavor for the it-just-works quality. (Ubuntu and Mint are also pretty much hassle-free for normal use) Older Macs can use Boot Camp to also run Windows. Or heck, do like Windows 10/11. I think the important thing is just that it’s distinctly different.

Then, on this separate OS, ~only~ work and productivity things. Don’t even log into personal accounts. It basically establishes an “in the office at work” zone in your computer where you aren’t going to just open a new tab and get pulled off.
 
@theflagen430297 Try a tablet that is only dedicated to Reddit, then Facebook/Instagram. If it's not a functional device that you need for work or personal communication then it may be easier to control use. Make a commitment to charge it less or put limits on it perhaps. Just a thought...
 
@yochanagrace
or while hanging out with the kids.

When my kiddo was 9 months old I quit a job because I wasn’t able to spend enough time with kiddo

Set priorities

Set goals

Don’t let toxic habits/addictions/friendships/activities rob your precious time on this planet!
 
@avafish The Black & White mode on the screen REALLY makes a difference. Not only easier to read but not having color really minimizes the distraction. I paired a garmin instinct 2x since I hate charging a phone and a watch and so far I don’t have to touch my phone since gps+compass+flashlight are on my watch now.

But man, Reddit really pulls at my heart strings since as human beings we have the urge to solve problems and Reddit is full of them. When I REALLY want to work I delete the Reddit app!
 
@avafish Yeah I think that’s part of the appeal. I only came to Reddit when Quora created a paywall and killed itself. And now @parentingpod is treading on dangerous ground. Other social media doesn’t appeal to me, not as interactive. Everything else’s comment system is more like a “hey look at me I was there” while Reddit is very interactive and useful.

I’ll try using on desktop for a while and dump
It off my phone.
 
@phathu Yeah the dudes posted the same post with the intro paragraph changed to a bunch of different threads. Just trying to spam people to use this app.
 
@thegreenchef So I took a moment to look at @cgomez and at some point I started counting all the apps this person recommends to others. There are a minimum of 5 posts a day, with a ton of responses and made it to 20 different apps they recommend since it changed their life before I stopped counting.

Is this user a bot?
 

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