Disclaimer: This article is written for developers with a job that does not depend on emails, social media and texting. Most of the points are based on my personal experience.
We live in an age where social media, text messaging and emails have become an integral part of our lives. The average American spends more than 40 minutes a day checking their Facebook feeds. Whereas these tools are useful for communication and productivity, they may also be a distraction on your productivity. By applying little discipline, you can easily improve your productivity.
Image courtesy: Manish Tewatia, C# Corner
If you're active on one or more social media apps (Facebook, Twitter, Whats app and so on) and check them frequently, it could be a distraction to your focus and productivity. How often do you check your emails? Are emails an important part of your job function? Most of us have text messages enabled on our mobile devices.
The Lifehack's article advice is to never check your email in the morning.
According to Morgenstern, checking your email the first thing when you get into the office each morning is problematic because it can a false sense of accomplishment. You answer 40 emails and you feel like you've done a lot of work, but in reality you probably still have piles of paperwork, meetings and phone calls to make. Answering email is essential to doing your work, but it isn't always something that is actively making money for you or your company.
Unless your job relies on social media, emails, or texting, you should disable automatic notifications. Allocate a block of time during the day depending your frequency and the importance of the emails. You could check your email once every hour or 2 hour block.
“Allocate a block of time to check your social media, emails and text messages.”
Once you allocate a block of time to check your social media, emails and text messages, make it a habit. Once it becomes a habit, you will never think about it.
Bonus Productivity Tips
The two most important productivity tips I can give you are, set a goal and make a daily to-do list. Before you leave your work for the day, you should make a to-do list for tomorrow and the first thing you do in the morning should be to review today's to-do list. Check out these two useful articles:
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Here is a good article, 12 Tips for Increasing Productivity that has the following 12 tips:
- Seek help / Delegate tasks accordingly
- Do not get sucked into unnecessary meetings
- Create to-do lists
- Take breaks
- Weed out distractions
- Stop watching so much TV
- Set ambitious, yet realistic goals
- Designate times to handle e-mail
- Reward yourself for motivation
- Constantly ask yourself if you what are doing presently is productive
- Spend a few minutes preparing for the next day
- Sleep early and get up early
Here is an interesting article on the other side, The Not-to-Do List -- 7 Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Productivity and Happiness that includes the following points that may be harming your productivity:
- Touching emails more than once
- Meeting just to meet
- Meeting without an agenda
- Repeating mistakes
- Using a phone as an alarm
- Allowing app notifications
- Being a chameleon
Summary
Unless your work involves frequent use of Social Media, Emails and Text messages, you can improve your productivity by simply allocating some time blocks for them.

Mohamed Gani MnPosted Nov 6, 2015, 11:21 AM
Smart one
Sibeesh VenuPosted Oct 15, 2015, 4:14 AM
Thanks for sharing
Humayun Kabir MamunPosted Oct 15, 2015, 12:59 AM
Nice...
Ankit BansalPosted Oct 15, 2015, 12:47 AM
nice..thanks for sharing
Priyaranjan K SPosted Oct 14, 2015, 12:25 PM
Useful one Sir ..
Suman VermaPosted Oct 14, 2015, 9:24 AM
Nice information!!
Sujeet SumanPosted Oct 14, 2015, 9:07 AM
Nice sharing sir................
Harshad PansuriyaPosted Oct 14, 2015, 8:19 AM
Nice one
Akash VarshneyPosted Oct 14, 2015, 7:47 AM
Good to know !! . very infromative
Ramchand RepallePosted Oct 14, 2015, 7:38 AM
Great one..
Nilesh JadavPosted Oct 14, 2015, 7:22 AM
This is great !! Nice one sir !!
Mukesh KumarPosted Oct 14, 2015, 6:34 AM
Good One Sir
Rajeesh MenothPosted Oct 14, 2015, 6:32 AM
Still I am not using Whats app & I have no account for it !! . The only thing i am spending my time to programming community and fb,twitter,etc..
Yashwant VishwakarmaPosted Oct 14, 2015, 6:27 AM
Nice Tips :)
Gowtham RajamanickamPosted Apr 6, 2015, 4:15 AM
great sir
Krishnanand SivarajPosted Jan 28, 2015, 3:30 AM
Nice
Elina RomanPosted Jan 28, 2015, 3:26 AM
you guys are really very busy.Have a good day.
Praveen KumarPosted Jan 26, 2015, 3:48 AM
Right! this type of email is necessary to check in the morning because it's the part of our work
Sam HobbsPosted Jan 25, 2015, 10:06 PM
As for email in the morning, it depends on the individual. It really depends upon whether the messages are work-related. Personally it works best for me to check the email in the morning and get that out of the way so I can concentrate on programming.
Praveen KumarPosted Jan 25, 2015, 11:36 AM
Right! We should make a habit to spend limited time in a day instead of being dependent on all these things because we couldn't feel well without using social media.
Vithal WadjePosted Jan 25, 2015, 11:09 AM
Great ,in some of the organization mobiles phones are banned while working ,now at my current client site mobile phones are not allowed and result of this all people just talking about the project instead of wasting time for discussing social media activities. thanks Mahesh Chand sir for sharing it .You and Vidya Vrat Agarwal sir doing great job by sharing such a career related articles.
Rahul Kumar SaxenaPosted Jan 25, 2015, 10:03 AM
Every thing has its advantage and disadvantage... Matter is in which way you use.... Well thanks Mahesh Sir for lighting the ways from where we can be more productive... :)
Michal HabalcikPosted Jan 25, 2015, 9:52 AM
facebook is evil. It always kept me distracted from my work. Thankfully I have disabled it a while ago.