3 reasons why having your phone out of sight instead of beside you is better for doing focused work (and why 2FA isn't as big an issue as you claim it is)

[u/Phukovsky]

1. Your brain literally works harder when it can see your phone

Research from the University of Texas at Austin found that participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk. Having a smartphone within sight or within easy reach reduces a person's ability to focus and perform tasks because part of their brain is actively working to not pick up or use the phone. Whether the phone was turned on or off made no difference. Whether it was lying face up or face down on a desk made no difference. Your brain is burning precious cognitive resources just to ignore the thing.

I notice this exact phenomenon when I keep my phone beside me during work. Even when it's silent and face down, I can feel the pull. My eyes drift to it. Part of my mind is constantly aware of its presence, like there's this low-level anxiety that I might be missing something important. The moment I move it to another room, that mental tension disappears.

2. Context switching destroys your focus (and phones are context-switching machines)

Every time you glance at your phone and back to your work, the damage goes far beyond those 10 seconds. You're triggering attention residue: fragments of the previous task that remain in your attentional space when you switch to something else. The researchers found that the mere presence of one's smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity and impairs cognitive functioning, even though people feel they're giving their full attention and focus to the task at hand. Smartphones are designed to be context-switching machines. That's literally their job.

3. Intention must precede attention, and visible phones kill intention

Before you start any deep work session, you need to set a clear intention about what you're going to accomplish. But when your phone is visible, it can easily become the most attractive object in your environment, pulling your attention away from your intended focus. You end up working on whatever enters your awareness instead of what you planned to work on. Without clear intention, everything becomes a distraction.

"But I need my phone for two-factor authentication!"

How often are you really logging into new services during a focused work session? Once? Twice? Here's one solution: plan ahead. If you know exactly what you're going to work on (which you should), handle your 2FA logins at the start of your session, then put the phone in another room.

I actually go one step further and turn my phone completely off when I put it in another room. Even knowing it's just sitting there, powered on, creates this subtle mental tether. When it's off, that connection is completely severed. Yes, it takes 30 seconds to boot up if I need it, but that brief friction is a feature for me, not a bug.

The minor inconvenience of getting up to grab your phone for the occasional 2FA code pales in comparison to the cognitive drain of having it visible for hours. Most sites and apps with 2FA will initiate authentication every time a user logs in from a new device, but not every time you access something you're already logged into.

Granted, I do understand that for some people working in IT or security, 2FA is more demanding and the solution isn't so simple. But for most of us that do have to use 2FA, I believe we use it as an unnecessary justification to keep our phones close by.

[u/orcateeth]

Oh, you are so right. I will sequester that thing.

[u/ConstableMaynard]

You can log into your text messages for android on your browser for 2fa. Not sure about imessage.

[u/No-External-7722 → u/ConstableMaynard]

Do you mean Authenticator?

[u/xiomia → u/No-External-7722]

No they're taking about when you receive a code via SMS. But, yeah, I need Microsoft Authenticator a few times each day and sometimes Google Authenticator. If it's SMS it comes up on my watch which is another distraction to remove when trying to focus.

[u/No-External-7722 → u/xiomia]

I just use phone link on my desktop 🤷🏼‍♀️

[u/DesiBwoy]

I put my phone in a drawer across the room when I work. After some time I'm so focused in work I forget it's even there.

[u/Phukovsky → u/DesiBwoy]

This is the way. Out of sight and out of reach.

[u/crazy_engineer18]

"Intention must precede attention."

Hey thanks for this. This is exactly the root cause of why I feel so incomplete after my deep work sessions. Because I don't set any intention! I just pick up my to-dos and get started working on them w/o intentionally picking up the important tasks. This was really insightful for me. Thank you! :)

[u/Front_Target7908]

If only, my workplace makes you do 2FA every 10 minutes. So stupid. 

[u/LuckyDuckyStucky]

I scroll through tiktok with headphones on when I do my drudgery busy work on my computer... It's not that serious