The phone in the other room

0:00 Putting your phone face down on the desk does

0:02 almost nothing.

0:03 The problem was never the screen lighting up.

0:06 It's that part of your attention stays parked

0:09 on the object itself,

0:11 quietly waiting.

0:12 Researchers have measured this:

0:15 people perform worse on concentration tasks

0:18 when a phone is simply visible,

0:20 even switched off,

0:21 even belonging to someone else.

0:23 The fix is unglamorous.

0:26 Put it in another room.

0:28 Not a drawer, not a bag, another room,

0:32 where retrieving it costs you standing up.

0:35 You'll notice something uncomfortable in the

0:38 first twenty minutes:

0:40 how often you reach for something that isn't

0:42 there.