Call it laziness, a disease, a character flaw, a bad habit or whatever; the truth is no one is totally free from the strangling grip of procrastination. How many times have you made up your mind to get specific things done within a specified time frame but found yourself caught on the web 🕸 of procrastination, and ended up achieving nothing at the end of the day? I guess uncountable. You ain't alone. We are all guilty of this merciless ambition killer at some point in time. Procrastination doesn't spare anyone and will eventually destroy anyone who doesn't device a way to fight it off.
And for us, as humans, to develop an effective way to check the menace of procrastination, there is a need to understand the root causes of procrastination first. For years, scientists used to think that human inclination to procrastinate is solely tied to time management skills. But that's only a part of the reason as emotion and self-doubt have equally been implicated as well by recent research. The situation is rather worse off with the invention of digital gadgets and smartphones. These inventions jockey for attention at any given time. From a new email, a text message to even the news, which jointly constitute a distraction — the main precursor for procrastination. According to data from the Journal Computers In Human Behaviour, there is a connection between procrastination and internet use with inability to create flow.
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We tell ourselves, "I'll take a few minutes to check out some messages on WhatsApp." But before you know it, several hours have gone at the expense of the business of the day. I, personally, have been guilty of this with Relay Pro app. My addition to Relay Pro app in particular, WhatsApp and other social media platforms (but not Steemit) have cost me a lot in terms of fewer accomplishments. For instance, on the sideline, I have always wanted to be producing three qualitative utopian-targeted articles every week but I hardly achieve two per week for many months now. I'd always spend the little time I have to write articles on meaningless internet activities, and would be regretting it at the end of the day. The reality of this fact has given me a lot of concern. And for quite sometime, I have been combing the internet for a solution to this seemingly entrenched habit of procrastination.
Thankfully, my research for an effective anti-procratination tool really paid off handsomely with my discovery of Get-off-your-phone app. In this article, therefore, I will be reviewing this effective application that have been of immense help to me since discovering it some few weeks ago.
Get-off-your-phone Application
One question that keeps flashing in my mind whenever I am caught in putting off tasks unendingly while being engrossed with my phone is: "How can I stay off this phone?". Because I knew that anything that would limit my access to my most commonly used apps would help me get more productive; I knew this and so was ready to accept such a tool. That's exactly what I found in Get-off-your-phone app when I first discovered it.
Get-off-your-phone application is, therefore, a simple app management application that lets you lock down preselected apps (for a specific period of time), which are basically those apps that you're most addicted to. In other words, for a certain period of time, the app would help you to unwind and stay away from those apps that distract you the most. Personally, this simple app management application has been very helpful to me in the area of avoiding putting off things I needed to do at any given time. The app doesn't only lock down those apps that I give attention to 24/7, it also effectively block notifications from them so that I won't receive them until the timer runs about.
To stay away from certain apps for a certain period of time, all I would need to do is set a list of apps that I wouldn't want to have anything to do with for the set time period, and the put a lock on them using Get-off-your-phone app. And viola!
Features of Get-off-your-phone app and how to use it
There are some interesting characteristics that make Get-off-your-phone app one of its kinds. First, getting to know how one could use the app and control access to a select applications, one would think that the interface of such an app would be of a complex nature. But hey! You're wrong. With its sleek design, the interface of Get-off-your-phone app is very simple and awesomely straightforward.
Once opened, even if you're a first timer to using the app, you're certainly not going to spend time cracking your head to figure out how to find your way around. This is due to its simple navigational characteristics. In essence, the sleekness of its design makes navigating it an absolute breeze.
The app allows up to 4 lock times: 30 minutes, 1, 2, and 3 hours. Once you're done selecting apps of interest, you can go ahead and choose appropriate lock time, say 3 hours. This means that the selected app(s) will remain effectively locked down until the chosen 3hrs lock time has elapsed. That's only when the app will become available again.
Get-off-your-phone's multiple lock screen colours with different GIFs images help to create amazing different colour contrasts that make it very easy to know how much time is left for a particular app to unlock. So, one cannot feign ignorance as to when the preselected app(s) would become available again. Jointly, all this helps to improve user experience of the app.
To use the app, it's a self-explanatory process. First, download and install it from either the Play Store or F-droid platforms. Thereafter, follow the pop-up screen to give usage permission, and deactivate battery optimisation.
Click on the three rectangular bars at the top left screen of the app to open the drop down menu, and follow through to select appropriate apps to lock down. Don't limit yourself in selecting apps; you can select as much as you want. For me, the app that I usually put on lock down mode is Relay Pro, because of its battery draining barrage of notifications.
Select apps, select desired time, check desired settings and start lock-down!
It's beautiful minimal design and colours with light and dark themes are built to allow necessary flexibility in order to serve the interests of different groups of people. There're folks, like myself, who cannot behold the eye-killing brightness of the app during nighttime. Under such circumstance, one can easily set the app to dark theme, like I used to do, and still carry on with the business of the day.
Having said that, do carefully follow through with the above descriptions and you will surely lock 🔒 down the app(s) that is/are always holding you down with unending habit of procrastination.
Summary
Procrastination is such a deadly disease which, if not carefully managed, is out to kill many life aspirations and objectives. No one can claim to be totally free from the firm grip of procrastination, as everyone must have fallen victim at one point or the other. It's not that procrastination is insurmountable. No. With appropriate tool and self determination, procrastination can be effectively silenced.
In this article, I have been able to deliver a concise and comprehensive review of Get-off-your-phone app. With this app, you can filter out and lock down those apps that you're addicted to; those apps that keep you perpetually away from working on your life goals and objectives.
With this app, many days of unending procrastination are over. This is one effective app management application that has been able to keep me from impulsively using my phone. For the past one week since I started using the app, I have written three articles so far; a result I have never been able to produce in my many months of writing for utopian-io.
Thanks for reading.
Links
Github repository: https://github.com/Alikaraki95/Getoffyourphone
Available on Play store and F-droid
Research paper source
All images used in this post were taken with my android phone, otherwise are properly sourced.