by Scott Ginsberg, author of “Personal Creativity Management (PCM): 366 Daily Meditations to Leverage Intellectual Capital, Drive Innovation and Earn Greater Profits, Without Burning Out“
You’ve got a brand-new smart phone in your hands. The power and speed of the device now greatly exceeds the computing capabilities that the military was concerned about related to national security just a few years ago.
Whether you are travelling, at home or at work, you have a miracle at your fingertips! The real challenge is in knowing how to make the best use of it.
Here are 10 of my favorite tips on how to be more prolific with your smart phone.
1. Turn off your all notifications.
By shutting off your notifications except texts and calls (yes, that means even email, social media, and amber alerts) you will suppress the competing stimuli, block out distracting noise and stay present with what matters most so you aren’t disrupted, distracted, and can focus on what is most important to you.
2. Adjust screen brightness to the lowest possible setting.
Keeping your screen as dim as possible is essential, since binge watching is clinically proven to be detrimental to sleep quality and lead eye strains. Now you can use your phone to create work you’re proud of without giving yourself a headache. Lowering brightness also preserves battery life, so you can read, write or draw more!
3. Curate your own inspirational music playlists.
Listen to music that inspires you every single day until you can’t take it anymore and have to compose something or you’ll lose your mind. This keeps the flow of creative inspiration flowing so you’re always getting ideas for melodies, lyrics and rhythms from music that inspire you. Same goes for pictures or other inspirational source material.
4. Make a mission control list.
Create detailed lists for all of the most critical things you need to do on your phone. Keep a list of everything on your creative plate. Track the projects, creative ventures, personal commitments that flood you with a set of intensely positive emotions like happiness, exhilaration and even bliss. Create an intellectual inventory list, to keep track of ideas and notes and even sentences that fuel your daily creative efforts. Use your lists as a personal mission control for productivity that reduces work overwhelm and boredom. Consult these lists when you need motivation to get back on track and you’ll be creating new art in no time flat.
5. Start a victory log.
Keep a victory log on your phone where you place a gold star on it every time you complete a major step in one of your goals. This list of personal achievements will pay off in spades when you need to revitalize after a hard day. You’ll also have a comprehensive and detailed answer for when your spouse asks “what did you do today?”
6. Use the voice record.
Hate writing? Don’t like keying in words at a snails’ pace? No problem. Get a recorder app and click on that microphone button. Voice-to-text is there for you to capture whatever you or other people say. You can even then transcribe the sound to text using Google voice or any of the super cheap transcription technologies that are available. Capture it, save it, and use it later!
7. Take lots of screenshots.
Learn how to use the buttons on your phone to capture anything that you find while surfing on your phone and save it for later use. This can be incredibly useful. You can return to and focus on the idea you captured to focus and give it the time it really deserves to leverage it to the max.
8. Highlight notes while reading.
PDF file readers and ebook readers like the Kindle App offer the ability to highlight sections and even add notes while reading. They also allow you to then save and export all the notes at a later time so that you can turn them into action plans.
9. Take lots of photos.
Your smart phone camera is equipped with camera that take still photography and even videos of a quality that can be used for professional business and publishing purposes. You can use these images on social media to inspire and make favorable impressions on people any time you want. Learn how to use your camera smart phone and make the most of the technology at your fingertips.
10. Reach out and touch people.
Call people you haven’t talked to in years. Instead of being on social media for entertainment only, search for, find and join in the groups on the things you love, or on the skills and work topics you are most interested in. Then look for people who are asking questions that you can answer. Help the people you can help the most.
Scott Ginsberg is a TEDx speaker, internationally acclaimed author of 50 books, 11 albums, 3 music films, and numerous other creative works. His most recent books are “Prolific: The Art & Science of Collecting, Creating and Communicating Your Ideas” and “Personal Creativity Management (PCM): 366 Daily Meditations to Leverage Intellectual Capital, Drive Innovation and Earn Greater Profits, Without Burning Out“. He also just created the Prolific Online Tool and Community.
