Offtime: Solution to Hyperconnectivity with your phone

We provide you with intuitive analytics of your phone usage, enabling you to identify your habits. Learn what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, and how long for.

.. For a chosen period, block calls, texts and notifications that might disturb you. Select the people who can still get through, and we’ll make sure you don’t miss a thing. (Android only)

.. Welcome to the age of hyperconnectivity

Read This Story Without Distraction (Can You?)

Indeed, multitasking, that bulwark of anemic résumés everywhere, has come under fire in recent years. A 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that interruptions as brief as two to three seconds — which is to say, less than the amount of time it would take you to toggle from this article to your email and back again — were enough to double the number of errors participants made in an assigned task.

.. Not the same as mindfulness, which focuses on emotional awareness, monotasking is a 21st-century term for what your high school English teacher probably just called “paying attention.”

.. “It’s a digital literacy skill,” ..

.. “When I was looking for jobs and interviewing, they’d always want me to say, ‘I’m a great multitasker,’ ” he said. “And I wouldn’t. My inability to multitask was seen as a negative. Now I can just say, ‘I am a monotasker. I am someone who works best when I focus on one thing at a time.’ ”

.. A good sign you’ve task-switched yourself into a stupor: mindlessly scrolling Facebook at the end of the night or, as in Ms. Zomorodi’s case, looking at couches on Pinterest. “I just stuff my brain full of them because I can’t manage to do anything else,” she said. “The sad thing is that I don’t get any closer to deciding which one I like.”

..  “If I keep looking at my phone or my inbox or various websites, working feels a lot more tortuous. When I’m focused and making progress, work is actually pleasurable.”

.. Monotasking can also be as simple as having a conversation.

“Practice how you listen to people,” Ms. McGonigal said. “Put down anything that’s in your hands and turn all of your attentional channels to the person who is talking. You should be looking at them, listening to them, and your body should be turned to them. If you want to see a benefit from monotasking, if you want to have any kind of social rapport or influence on someone, that’s the place to start. That’s where you’ll see the biggest payoff.”

Constant Phone Notifications Are Ruining Your Productivity

Multitasking is so last year. New research has begun to suggest that becoming a GTD all star doesn’t necessarily mean doing it all, all at once. The new way to work is by dialing into one activity, also called monotasking.

.. Some studies have suggested that the average person checks their phone up to 150 times a day. The reason for that stems partially from a desire to feel connected, but also, interestingly, as a stress reliever.

According to a study by Baylor University, compulsive phone checking was seen as an attempt to reduce anxiety. Participants reported that the behavior of looking at their phone alerts was a way to boost their mood.

Another study conducted by Aalto University in Finland found that the process of checking your phone and receiving a notification produces a reward loop in your brain which compels you to repeat the action over and over again in search of more “rewards,” in the form of notifications. These findings substantiate the above Baylor study that phone checking is correlated with a dopamine response, by providing momentary satisfaction.

Why You Open Too Many Browser Tabs And How To Stop It

When you are jumping from tab to tab your brain is releasing dopamine receptors that are giving you the illusion that you are being more productive. Your brain, however, is not actually processing all of these stimuli. Rather, it’s frantically jumping from focus point to focus point, called spotlights, desperately trying to dial in on one item at a time in rapid succession.

multitasking

Image credit: Buffer

One study from the University of Sussex used fMRI scans to study the brains of people who engaged in differing degrees of multitasking. What they found was that the more a person multitasks, the less gray matter they possess in their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the part of the brain associated with cognitive and emotional processing.

In other words, multitasking is literally altering your brain chemistry.

 

The Solution: Onetab Chrome Extension

Onetab converts all open tabs into one single page of bookmarks. This can reduce memory usage from GBs to mere MBs of space, and it allows for easy perusing when you’re ready to scroll through them and tab triage.