Feeling Unproductive? Hack Your Way to Better Habits

Written by Mary Levitski

Not feeling productive? Be like entrepreneur Sarah Landstreet and hack your way there. The founder and CEO of carbon-neutral packaging firm Georgette Packaging – one of the fastest growing businesses in Canada – would love to turn to some piece of mindless TV magic and tune out the world. Landstreet would also happily lose herself in a scroll through the eye candy that is Instagram.

But she can't.

Landstreet doesn't have a TV, and she recently deleted the Instagram app (again). It's all by design. “I like putting systems in place that force me to change my behaviour," says the entrepreneur, who also installed a landline in her home so she can gain some distance from her smartphone.

“I always feel like cell phones are like Tamagotchi. It's like a pet that just gives you so much work," says Landstreet, who intentionally chose a rotary phone for her landline, so it doesn't even have a built-in answering machine. “There's nothing waiting for me to do. The phone's not requiring anything of me. It just sits there. If it rings, I can pick it up if I want to, but that's it."

Landstreet admits the phone hack doesn't work 100 per cent of the time, but it has helped her disconnect so she can focus on whatever she chooses – be it thinking of green packaging solutions (she refers to climate change as her “war"), helping other women succeed in business (she hosts a regular female founders group in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.) or learning how to screen print for fun (“I just find printing really fascinating!" she says).

I can vouch for Landstreet's method: In an attempt to read more, I moved my e-book app to where my go-to social media app used to sit on my smartphone, and I now find myself with my nose in an electronic book more often.

Read more of what Landstreet and other innovative thinkers have to say about failure, problem-solving and more in Inside Six Innovative Minds.