Correction, 10 October 2026: an earlier version of this article described four third-party Google Assistant services: Daily Expense, Help Me Choose, Timesheets Companion and Vocal Notes. Google turned off all third-party Conversational Actions on 13 June 2023, so those four tips no longer work and have been removed.
Do you get easily distracted when working? Google Assistant Services can help you stay productive by eliminating the need to look at your phone and still complete some tasks.
During the day we often pick up our phones to send a text relating to what we are working on and get sidetracked by different notifications or apps. We end up wasting the time we should have spent working.
You can keep distractions to a minimum if you don’t have to look at your phone. There’s a wide variety of services on Google Assistant that will help you avoid that trap. All you need to activate them is your voice. And the services in this list don’t require you to add any new apps to your phone either. You may even be able to delete some!
Also read: How to Create Customized Google Assistant Commands
If you don’t have Google Assistant set up to respond to your voice, you can follow these quick steps to enable it.
- On your device, touch and hold the Home button.
- At the top right, tap “More Settings.”
- Under “Devices” select your phone or tablet.
- Turn on Google Assistant, and turn “Ok Google” detection on.
Here are some useful things Google Assistant Services can do for you to help keep you away from distraction and working productively.
Send email
Sending email is a necessary part of anyone’s workday, but opening your email can lure you into a black hole of distractions. Use Google Assistant to send an email without opening your inbox and losing an hour in the email weeds.
To do this, launch Google Assistant and say “Email _______ (name of contact).” Then dictate the message you want to compose, review it, and send it.
Use a calculator
Math is hard sometimes. If you need a quick calculation, you don’t need to open your calculator app and type in the problem. All you need to do is ask Google Assistant, and it will solve the problem for you using the proper order of operations. This feature saves you both time and mental energy, making it easier to remain focused and be productive.
Remind you
Busy people get distracted and forget things. If you have a meeting to go to or plan on watching a webinar at 2:00, you can ask Assistant to set a reminder for you by saying, “OK Google, set a reminder to watch that webinar at two” or ” Remind me to call John.”
Set a timer
Many workers use the Pomodoro method for keeping themselves focused. Part of using this system requires setting timers for work time and break time. Setting a timer using Google Assistant is easy. Just say, “OK Google,” and then ask it to set a timer or countdown to one minute. It starts running automatically.