Turn off unnecessary notifications and keep your phone out of sight while working
A notification can impair attention even if you do not look at or touch your phone, by an amount comparable to taking a call or texting. Even resisting a phone sitting on the desk can leave less mental capacity available. People most dependent on their phones showed the largest drop.
What it takes
Free. A few minutes changing settings, with little ongoing willpower required.
What you may gain
In laboratory attention tasks with university students, receiving a notification without interacting with the phone significantly impaired performance, comparably to calls or messages. Two other experiments found that the presence of one's own phone reduced available cognitive capacity even when participants successfully avoided checking it. Greater phone dependence predicted larger impairment.
Context & considerations
These were individual laboratory tasks; cumulative effects over everyday life were not measured. If your job requires being reachable, retain notifications from a few essential contacts.
Research & references
Stothart, Mitchum & Yehnert (2015). The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000100 ; Ward, Duke, Gneezy & Bos (2017). Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. https://doi.org/10.1086/691462