Four Mobile Apps That Are Ruining Your Productivity
Smartphones, tablets and mobile devices are excellent for those times when you’re on the go. You can stay connected with friends, family and the rest of the world through just a few simple apps. While there are plenty of apps that increase productivity and make you more efficient, there are just as many that will keep you distracted.
Addictive games like Flappy Bird can keep you focused on achieving that high score, instead of completing all your daily tasks and responsibilities. In fact, it is so easy to get sidetracked by some of these mobile apps that one could claim they actually do the opposite and ruin productivity.
Which apps are problematic? Which ones call for you to waste your precious time? We’re going to explore some of the most popular mobile apps that are actually ruining your productivity.
Twitter is a problem because no matter what you start using the app for you always get sidetracked in one way or another. There’s just no avoiding it because there is too much going on in the average Twitter feed. That being said, Twitter is an excellent place to stay up to date on news and current events.
While running a social media campaign for your business, it’s also important to post frequently and on a daily basis. Because of that, you see a lot of folks perusing Twitter and interacting with others to get the best possible experience.
Of course, when you take a moment to step outside the Twitter bubble it’s pretty easy to see how much time it requires you to invest. That may sound a bit silly at first, especially when you consider the fact that everything takes a little time to blossom — but Twitter actually requires a lot of time, time that not everyone may have to waste.
It takes time to weed through the newsfeed to find relevant updates. It takes time to navigate to a profile or tweet to stay in touch with someone. It takes even more time to build up engagement on the platform to a point where it’s useful for your brand. The list goes on and on. The point here is that Twitter eats up time, and that is very bad for productivity.
Mobile Games
Simple mobile games like Flappy Bird are all the rage right now. It’s very easy to jump in for a quick game session, play for a few moments and then jump right back out. Unfortunately, a lot of these mobile games are addictive and once you start playing, you actually end up wasting a lot of your own time — or your employer’s time if you’re on the clock.
Online gaming sites like the one the Dover Downs casino offers are a convenient way to gamble from anywhere. Let’s just stop while we’re ahead and say mobile games in general are a real problem when it comes to productivity. If you can help it, you should stay as far away from them as possible and leave the gaming for your free time. If you have a separate business phone, you should refrain from installing mobile games on your device in the first place.
Email Apps and Notifications
Sometimes staying on the grid is an absolute must. When you’re busy focused on work, however, email notifications — or real-time notifications of any kind — can be very distracting.
It’s difficult to focus on the task at hand when you can clearly see that one of your relatives emailed you photos from a recent trip. Keeping those notifications active locks you up in what I like to call the email cage. You continuously check your notifications and respond to emails throughout your day, with no regard to other tasks on your plate — thus ruining your productivity.
Long story short, when you’re busy with a task you should turn notifications off.
Messaging Apps
IM apps like Google Hangouts, Skype, Facebook Messenger or even AIM (yes, I went old school) are terrible for your productivity. If you need to collaborate with someone on a project talking to them directly is not an issue. However, when you’re signed in to one of the aforementioned services, and you use it constantly to chat with others throughout your day, it will consume your time.
Since chatting with others is wasting time, it certainly constitutes a productivity loss.
Don’t Give Apps Power
If you find yourself using an app or social platform continuously throughout your day, so much so that it’s wasting a lot of your time, you should eliminate it from your routine. After all, it doesn’t make sense to ignore your responsibilities because of a mobile game or social app, right?
The four apps we mentioned above are big offenders when it comes to ruined productivity, but they’re definitely not the only problems in existence.
What apps ruin your productivity?
Image by Flickr and Daniel Y. Go
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