"When your mind is even slightly resisting a task, it will look for novel things to focus on. And it doesn’t need to look far — only as far as your phone," writes Chris Bailey (photo, left) in a piece at Ideas.TED.com.

"Our smartphones provide an endless stream of bite-sized, delicious information for our brains to consume. It’s easy to get hooked, even to feel addicted. And most of us would prefer not to feel this way. So last year, I started to hack my relationship with my phone, looking for small behavior changes I could make so that I would begin using my phone with intention, not automatically.

"Here are 7 strategies I found useful to prevent phones from taking over our time and attention: . . ."

Author bio – Chris Bailey is a productivity expert and the author of The Productivity Project.