Should you degrade?

One, If not the most groundbreaking invention of the 21st century is the smartphone, a tiny plastic, crystal and silicon square in our pockets with the information of the whole world within Itself, something which has greatly improved and at the same time made our lives more miserable, stagnating the quality of our relationships and our mindfulness. However, this doesn't mean that you should go back to using a flip phone or throw your phone to the garbage bin. What you should do is ask yourself If some of the functions and apps incorporated in It are distractions hidden as tools or they are really useful for our line of work. That's why I'll point some utilities and distractions that you can find in your mobile device, all so you can keep the first and consider deleting the latter. Let's begin with the utilities:

Google Maps:

Something that we can't actually live without If we live in big cities and need to find a direction. Previously we just asked for directions to strangers who might have been as lost as ourselves and usually spend a lot of time in search of our destination. However, that's not the case anymore, as with the help of Google Maps or any Directions App we can go straight to where we want to with the GPS activated.

Notes:

Sometimes you have great Ideas for a new project in the most unexpected places, and you require to write them down so you don't forget them. With paper not being available, what better place to trust your thoughts to that your phone. Using the notes in your phone is easy, secure and quick, so you don't have to worry about missing out on things because of not listing them.

Music Streaming Services:

One of the best forms of entertainment is listening to music, immersing yourself deeply in the panorama that skilled musicians create, painting their art through different sounds in a canvas represented by the space between your two ears. Luckily, we find ourselves in a point of time where we can access to all the music that has been recorded since a long time ago without It being too complicated or expensive, and making up for nights of experiences through sound.

Now that we know about some of the good features that they bring, we can begin to talk about some things that might be considered a distraction in most contexts:

Social Media

Even If you work through these means, you have to be sincere with yourself to acknowledge if It is really helping you or If It's just being an excuse for you to scroll through your feed for hours and procrastinate, taking off from your capacity to focus, have meaningful conversations and enjoy yourself, usually functioning more as a vector to bring your insecurities to the surface while making you compare with stylized portraits of someone else's life.

Email:

Even If It is a really powerful tool to communicate in a professional way and make requests to commerces and companies, you have to be mindful that most of what you see in your email is not worth the time you could be spending in something more valuable. Usually people mistake checking their mails for a productive thing to do, not realizing that they're just in automatic pilot opening one mail after another to find the same things.

There are a lot more of useful things you can find in your phone and at the same time more traps for your brain, though I consider these part of the most used through our day to day. I hope that this article could have been of use to you, showing you why the apps in your phone can be a great ally in your work or the worst enemy you can encounter, motivating you to find solutions and alternatives to be more mindful and present while using technology to your advantage. Thank you for your support and good luck!