Our favourite pastime habits are becoming much more focussed around tech and our handheld devices in particular, over the past years online services have seen a huge amount of growth with changing attitudes and a renewed demographic – much of this has been seen through genres such as online casinos as despite regulation and initiatives like Gamstop many are now available to all players, but with a potential future in remote working, how can you remove your tech temptations and focus on the task at hand?
(Image from starup-freak.net)
Keep hold of your old device – If you’ve recently upgraded, you may still have your old device to hand and are still unsure what to do with it – it may be worth holding on to it and using one of your devices as your dedicated work phone and the other for your personal and leisure use. Most devices are very similar from year to year and so you may not see any performance difference between either, particularly if your work or personal use is light – this way you can keep one device close by for your remote working professional life without the temptation to pick it up and play games, and your personal device to use once your day is finished.
Software locks and productivity tools – These haven’t been designed specifically for remote workers but have certainly been of great benefit for those making the change – this allows you to place a lock on your device for either a certain period of time or between two designated times, restricting the actions you can take on this device. There are also similar tools for browsers specifically too if this is another problem area for you, but you can set your working times as a hard lock and even if you are tempted to play, you’ll be unable to and it’ll keep you on track.
Limit your connection – Similar to productivity tools, if you’re still finding your way around these softer locks and find yourself playing on your device whilst working despite these efforts, a more restrictive step is to just limit your connection. Simply turning it off may not help as it’s the click of a button to turn it back on, but setting limits that either provide a warning or disconnect you entirely after the set limit is reached is easily possible on most devices and may just provide a small reminder that you need to get back to work.
There are a great number of challenges to a change to remote working and the temptation to slip in to more enjoyable or comfortable habits is just one of them, finding ways to measure this and reduce your play abilities may be the most effective way at solving the problem but ultimately it’s done to your own motivation to not do so – these games are designed to be as tempting as possible, so it will certainly come with difficulty, but it is just one of the many challenges facing the new shift to remote working.
