Angela Crocker

Write. Teach. Organize.

Schedule Digital Tasks and Digital Fun

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Digital Cleanse Day 13:

Schedule Digital Tasks and Digital Fun

Take time to schedule your digital activities. You get to decide when to use technology. In turn, this affirms when you’re NOT going to use technology. You don’t have to use it all the time. Frankly, a 24/7 digital life would be terrible for your physical and mental well-being and it can disrupt your sleep. You are in charge of your digital life. You also get to choose when you’re going to be offline, away from your computer, ignoring your smartphone.

I recommend you separate your digital tasks separately from digital fun. Digital tasks are things you do for work or your own projects. These might include writing blog posts, checking social media feeds, creating illustrations or editing copy.  Digital fun includes all your leisure activities. Movie night, browsing Instagram, video games, Instagram and other social media outlets are all fun digital activities. Of course, for a movie reviewer watching movies is work not play. That’s OK. You decide how to define the activities in your digital life.

Put your digital time in your calendar. Here’s an example from my own calendar. Events in blue are digital tasks related to my professional life. Orange events are digital snippets from my personal calendar.

A digital calendar excerpt showing digital tasks separately from digital fun.

You’ll notice my digital fun happens in early mornings, evenings and weekends. From Monday to Friday, I schedule my work related digital tasks, for the most part. What you can’t see in this example is that I have flexibility to move my digital appointments around other events. For example, if I’m a parent volunteer parent for a school field trip on Monday morning, I’ll reschedule my blog writing time for the afternoon.

There’s power in writing something down. It helps you set boundaries for how long and when you are going to do a particular activity. It also helps you prioritize that activity so it gets done. If you schedule a conflict, you decide if you can cancel the digital activity or reschedule it. Formalizing your digital appointments can also help you stick to it, especially if one or more digital tasks is a swallow the frog moment for you.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Give Up On Toxic People. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)

 

Dedicated Devices

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The Digital Cleanse Day 4:
Dedicated Devices

To streamline your digital life, you need dedicated devices. We’re talking full-blown, long-term commitment. Decide which device does what. Then stick to it.

Laptop computer with WordPress dashboard and iPad screening The House of ElliotHow you divide your digital activities will be a matter of personal preference. Your choices will be unique to your hardware and the content you create or consume. A dedicated device strategy creates patterns that focus your efforts. Here’s how I dedicate my devices:

I use my mobile phone primarily for phone calls, text messages, photography and Instagram.

I use my tablet, an iPad, to write rough drafts, read Facebook, peruse Twitter, read e-books, listen to music and watch TV either from iTunes or on Netflix. I also use it to delete spam emails and read/reply to priority emails from a small group of carefully selected VIPs.

I use my desktop computer with its two monitors to read and reply to email, format and upload writing for the web, to organize and edit my photos,  for spreadsheet work and file management.

My one exception is travel. I love to travel light. Carry-on only is ideal in this era of excess baggage fees and intensive security screenings. With the right combination of apps, I can do 85% of my work and digital leisure on my iPad.  I don’t work as efficiently as usual but its a joy to travel with ease. (If you’re interested in packing light, too, my gurus are Rick Steves, Marc Smith and Alex Tilley.)

If you’re struggling to decide how to use your devices, I suggest you go analog for a few minutes. Get out your sticky notes in two colours.  Using one colour, make a sticky note for each of your soon-to-be dedicated devices. Mobile phone, tablet and computer will get you started. Don’t forget your digital SLR camera, web enabled television, game console, fitness watch and other electronics.

Next, use the other colour of sticky notes. Make one note per digital task. Email. Photos. Instagram. Facebook. Twitter. Writing. Video game. TV. Movies. Music. E-books. And so on.

You’ve probably gathered by now that you simply match each digital task with a digital device. Likely, you’ll need a test period before you finalize how you’ll organize your dedicated devices.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore How Many Social Networks. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)