For anyone trying to become more productive in a digital age dominated by phones and technology, there are some long-touted tactics they’ll inevitably encounter: conserving willpower, working to find motivation, an endless variety of productivity “hacks” and apps. But it turns out that none of these things are the key to actually getting more done. […]
Digital Productivity
Overcoming Smartphone Addiction: How to Effectively Reduce Mindless Screen Time
In my articles about digital productivity, I’ve discussed topics like tech habit formation and getting into a flow state. But in order to truly assess our productivity today, we need to grapple with one particular piece of equipment that promises to make our lives easier but in reality causes all sorts of new problems. To find […]
Reaching a Flow State for Improved Digital Productivity
Staying productive in a digital and tech-addicted world is far from easy, and it’s easy to get sidetracked by the allure of shiny new tools like apps, browser plugins, and the like that all promise to give you results. But in order to achieve significant and lasting behavioral change, you need to start within. This […]
Is it Better to Take Notes By Hand or Digitally? (And Why You Should Do Both)
Today we can take notes using tablet and stylus; we can lug laptops to meetings; we can snap pictures of slides and whiteboards; we can even employ voice assistants like Siri to take down notes for us. But despite these new conveniences, many argue that note-taking by hand has certain benefits that we lose when […]
Continuous Partial Attention: How Devices Negatively Affect Our Focus
In today’s environment of constant connectivity, we routinely slog through multiple tasks in a single session. Blinking notifications pull us away from whatever we had been doing to something more pressing. We surf the web by opening up multiple browser tabs and scrolling back and forth between various articles, email accounts, social media streams and other […]
Gmail Advanced Search Tips: Cutting Through Your Inbox Clutter
Google products are known for their usability and uncluttered interfaces. This is great for novices, but users who demand more precision can be left frustrated as their basic keyword searches yield masses of irrelevant results. Gmail is one service in particular where it can be difficult to sift through a huge library of emails trying […]