Are You Addicted to Productivity Tools?

Given the sheer number of tasks a salesperson has to accomplish in a day, it’s easy to constantly feel pressed for time. It’s a good thing there are a boatload of apps at your disposal to help keep track of your to-do list, appointments, events and deadlines.

Although these apps are a huge help to most and can make your errands and appointments much easier to keep track of, being addicted to too many productivity apps can be detrimental. Salespeople, especially those who want to keep track of their every accomplishment for the day or week, are more prone to being addicted and obsessed with apps.

How do you know you’re addicted? The following are a few telltale signs that you should loosen your grip on your apps:

• You are over dependent – If you cannot function or accomplish anything important without the use of an app, there’s a dependency issue at hand.
• You have more productivity tools than necessary – Having three apps is good, five is okay, but more than ten running at once and you may have a problem.
• You view your apps every hour or more – Taking time out of your busy day to use several productivity apps every hour may actually be counterproductive. Add up all those wasted minutes and you’ll see that they can amount to a large chunk of your time that could have been spent doing something more productive, like following up with a prospect.
• You live and breathe productivity tools – There’s a fine line between a having healthy obsession with being as productive as humanly possible with the use of a few key apps and trying a new productivity app every week in an effort to find the ever elusive productivity holy grail. It’s nearly impossible to find a good system and make it work for you if you are constantly ditching that system for the next new app on the market.

If you have two or more of these signs, how can you recover from your addiction? Below are some tips:

• Honesty– You have to be honest with yourself about how many apps you are using and recognize that you do not need all of these tools. Moreover, you have to really want to change.
• Motivate yourself – List reasons why you don’t want to be addicted to these tools anymore. Do they take up too much of your time? Do they hinder you from doing more important things? Do they require more attention than you can spare? Are they counterproductive?
• Identify which tools are not necessary – Cut down the use of these tools by seeing which among them you can do without. Uninstall unnecessary tools. Keep only the ones that truly help you to excel, while saving you time.
• Quit cold turkey – Once you’ve identified which apps are not needed, immediately uninstall them or stop using them altogether.

Utilizing productivity apps has its pros and cons, and as with everything, a good balance and being in control of how you use these tools is the key to getting the most out of them.