How Putting Away Your Phone Can Help Your Career

How Putting Away Yur Phone Can Help Your Career Imagine youre trying to have a serious conversation with a co-worker, but every time you get to an important statement you hear a ping and your co-worker goes to check their phone. Not only do you have to restart your statement, but you know that you dont have your co-workers full attention. So much for a phone as a helpful communication device, right?With all of the ways teams can communicate in (and out of) the office, theres a lot of pressure to stay connected all of the time. There are, however, plenty of reasons why its good to disconnect. Not just to support your mental health and well-being, but also so you can be mora productive and help yourself at work.It can feel strange to not have your phone at first, but youll be surprised at how good you feel once you commit to disconnecting. Here are some of the benefits from putting your phone away.1.Youll be mora engaged.To test out how disconnecting feels, try leaving your phone at y our desk the next time you attend a group meeting. By leaving your phone behind, youll focus more on the person speaking than the near-constant phone buzz. Focusing more lwill make you an active participant in your teams meetings. Youll think of questions and concerns more quickly than you would have if you were spending the meeting glued to your phone.2.Youll sleep betterStudies have shown that the blue LED light from our smart devices disturbs our sleep schedule. When we dont sleep well, we dont perform well. Sleep is important for learning, memory, brain development, health, sleep researcher Steven Lockley said to The Washington Post. You couldnt design a worse system for learning.In addition, the National Sleep Foundations most recent study shows that 35% of Americans are getting fair or poor levels of sleep. If you feel tired right after youve woken up, you havent gotten enough sleep to support you throughout your work day. Putting your phone away can help you sleep more.3.Youl l clarify your work-life boundaries.If you allow your team to call you at 9 PM on weeknights to go over non-urgent items, theyll get accustomed to doing so. Dont hesitate to tell your team what times youre available and what methods they can use to reach you. Promoting a strong work-life balance is key to being a good manager and a good employee.The next aussicht you have to sit down with your boss, review your work hours and the best ways to reach you outside of them. This is a good way to promote yourself, but its also a great way to learn if your boss is a good manager. If your boss doesnt respect your work-life balance, it should raise a red flag.4.Youll focus on quality over quantity.Which sounds more impactful a texting conversation about a strategy for tomorrows presentation or a clear, concise email dictating what the strategy is? If you think the latter sounds better, then you probably appreciate the emails focus it has the same point as the text messages but is one messag e as opposed to several.When youre less connected, youll learn how one message can be just as impactful as many smaller messages. Youll also strengthen your communication skills by learning how to be more effective with less.5.Youll be more productive.Less distractions means more productivity. Put your phone on airplane mode for an hour and see how far you can get through an important assignment youll be surprised Our phones can be huge forms of distraction and putting them aside is a great first step. You can also boost your productivity by shutting off notifications in general. Ask yourself do you really need to know exactly when your favorite Instagram account posts a new pic? If not, you can shut it off.If youre ready to take the plunge, there are plenty of small steps towards being less reliant on your phone. The first of those is to build up your resolve respect yourself and your time, and others will follow.