I don’t care how many times you flip your phone over and stare at the screen. You’re addicted to it. We all are.

Here’s the problem: we need to use tech – like, a lot of tech – for our careers and life goals, but there’s no instruction manual. No one taught us how to use it correctly, so we just do what feels natural.

The good news is that there are easy ways to fix this.

We’re going to take a look at what it means to use technology incorrectly, why it’s important that you do along with problems, fixes and tools you can use to get started on using tech properly today.

EVERYONE knows, or thinks they know, the problem with technology: it’s the distraction. We’re constantly distracted by new messages, new updates and new things to read and watch. Our brains are being rewired for short-attention spans. Email and text messages are an endless source of interruptions. We’re getting dumber by the day.

The truth is more complicated. There is a problem but it is not distraction per se. The problem is that many people use technology in ways that are not productive, while others use it in ways that are deeply productive. As with any tool, it’s all in how you use it

We’re making a gadget to help you use gadgets.

The gadget we’re building is a little box with a flashlight on one side and a button on the other. When you press the button, it shines the light at whatever you’re holding in your hand. If it’s an iPhone, the light shines through the Apple logo, which is made of translucent plastic; the effect is subtle but still visible, so you know at a glance that you have an iPhone and not some other brand of phone.

This seems like a trivial thing to do; anyone could make one of these. You could make one from scratch, or buy something similar for $2.50 on Amazon. But that would be doing it wrong. The value of this gadget comes from its design, not its technology. Anyone can build something that does what it does; only we can build this particular thing that does it. That’s why it will cost $150 and why people will want to buy it: because it communicates something about their own status and taste when they use it in public.

The reason I mention this is not to denounce Apple, or even to criticize them relative to other companies in their business, who are all more or less as bad as they are and have

There are many things that you can do to make sure your devices are working properly. Most of these things are simple and easy to do. You can start by regularly turning off your devices or putting them on sleep mode when not in use. You can also try to limit the time that you spend using your gadgets at any one time. This is especially true for young children who may be harmed by too much gadget use.

Another thing you can do is to disconnect from the internet. You can turn off the wi-fi connection on your device so that you won’t get distracted from whatever activity you’re doing and be tempted to use your gadget.

You also have the option of removing all of the apps that distract you from what you need to do and only keep those that are necessary for work or school, such as Google Drive, Microsoft Office, and a dictionary app.

Lastly, make sure that your gadgets are always updated with the latest software so they will work properly.

It’s okay to not use technology properly, but it’s not okay to ignore the fact that you’re not using it properly. You can’t fix your relationship with technology if you don’t admit there is anything wrong with it in the first place.

I’ve had this problem for a long time. I’m terrible at texting and it’s been a source of stress for me for years. I don’t want to text people because I know I’m going to do something wrong. But when I can’t communicate with people, I get lonely. My problem with texting isn’t just that my phone is slow or that my thumbs are too big. It’s that I’m terrible at expressing myself over a medium that lacks body language and tone of voice.

When you ask people to think of an example of a gadget, they often mention something like the iPhone: a device with a lot of sophisticated technology inside. But the iPhone is better thought of as a platform rather than a gadget. It has many uses and many users. Most gadgets have neither. They are designed for particular tasks and owned by particular people.

The danger in this approach is that it can lead us to think that gadgets are less important than platforms. That’s wrong. The most powerful thing about the iPhone isn’t that it can be changed by many users, but that it can be used by many users. A platform alone doesn’t do anything; only when lots of people use it does it become valuable.

By contrast, an ordinary gadget becomes valuable as soon as one person starts using it; its value is intrinsic, not dependent on scale. This is why even though a platform has more potential users than any individual gadget, the average individual gadget can often be far more valuable than the average use of a platform.

It’s not just that platforms are overhyped relative to gadgets either; they’re also overhyped relative to other platforms. For example, Facebook gets an enormous amount of attention from the press, who seem to treat it as if