How A Screen Protector Increased My Productivity

February 13, 2025

“If you care about keeping your phone code secret, you should use this”, the seller said, emphatically pointing to the privacy screen guard. I knew about privacy-protecting screen guards, but I was not looking to buy one when I was at Gariahat market a couple of weeks ago. Reluctantly, I gave in and got one for myself. It made my phone miserable to use – yet, it was the best decision I made in the past few weeks.

With a privacy screen protector, other than the person holding a phone, no one can see what is on its screen. I had never used one, so I did not know about its drawbacks – the screen became noticeably dimmer and the resolution worsened resembling a phone from the 2000s. I have to admit, I was quite fond of my new phone’s screen, but with this protector on it, I kept having to zoom in and squint my eyes to read text. Accustomed to a crisp bright display, I now had to make my peace with seeing individual pixels on the screen – it broke my heart.

I made up my mind to remove the protector entirely, but having paid a premium price for it, I decided to keep it on for a week, during which a most surprising turn of events took place. I subconsciously started spending less time on the phone. The lesser appeal of the screen and just that slight struggle to view content nudged me towards spending time doing other – more productive – things than looking at reels on Youtube.

Since that day at Gariahat – two weeks ago now – I have been more present in conversations, more attentive, faster at reading technical documents, getting more sleep, working out more regularly, finished reading the long-pending book Hail Mary, started reading the Mistborn series and finished preparing my presentation for my upcoming talk at Monster Scale 2025. Doing all of this in a span of two weeks, while traveling, would sound undoable to me just a month ago.

In my defense, I never doom scroll on Instagram or spend hours on my phone. I do however look at my phone every now and then – watching videos or scrolling through Bluesky or Reddit in the form of breaks from my day-to-day tasks. I realize now, that it is not the amount of time I spend on the phone that is detrimental to my productivity – it is the frequent interruptions to my flow of work that is. A screen that takes away some of the gratification of social media by adding a little bit of struggle to use the phone, quite counter-intuitively, lowers my urge to use my phone, giving me back precious time I can spend doing just about anything else. I now use my phone when I need to get something done, not for entertainment – or worse, for procrastination.

I want phones to become what they were always intended to be – devices to help us with our daily tasks, instead of the addiction that they have become. Therefore, I wish today’s smart phones had poorer screens, but without sacrificing any of the features that form the foundation of our digital lives – like a great camera, location sharing or biometric authentication. But I doubt that the phone industry will allow phones to become less appealing – after all, one person’s addiction is another person’s source of revenue. It is thus on us to find ways to make our phones less pleasureful. My awful screen guard did just that and I am thankful for it.

Next time you are at the market, consider getting yourself a privacy screen protector – not because you need the privacy, but because you want to get back your productivity.

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