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.)

 

Swallow the Frog: How To Overcome Procrastination

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For everyone, including writers, there are always necessary tasks that we don’t really want to do. We may procrastinate or never accomplish these “to do” list items.

What’s your nemesis?

  • Have you delayed writing a first draft?
  • Are you behind in your self-editing?
  • Have you got an abundance of neglected ideas?
  • Do you put off updating your biography?
  • Neglect your blog?

I’m certainly guilty of this last one.

Look At The Research

Research* suggests we waste time and energy keeping these items on our to-do lists, rescheduling reminders and, sometimes, worrying about what’s not done. In order to finishing things, though, somehow we have to find the motivation or, maybe, overcome impulse control.

How can we reframe what we are avoiding and the overcome procrastination  that’s keeping us from finishing things?

Time to Swallow the Frog

The best thing to do is just do it. Get it over with and move on to other things. Finding the motivation to take action isn’t always easy but I’ve never regretted taking care of the distasteful task first.

Woman holding a toy frogI first heard this about this approach at a Canadian Women in Communications luncheon in Vancouver back in 1990-something. I wish I could remember the speaker’s name because he was compelling and dynamic. He described a mindset to tackle procrastinated tasks as moments to “swallow the frog” and that description has stuck with me. The phrase is now so commonly used that most don’t know its origin. It’s often attributed to Mark Twain but actually originated with French politician M. Gambetta circa 1872.

So the life lesson is: Swallow the frog. If you have to do something distasteful, just do it and be done. By making it the first item you accomplish for the day, you can immediately enjoy a sense of accomplishment and get on with enjoying the rest of the day. No need to waste energy and time, wondering what the frog will taste like or how it will feel sliding down your gullet. Once you’ve done it, you will know the answers to all these questions and the best part?

It will already be done.

Have you swallowed your frog today?

* See Association of Psychology Science, Forbes, The New Yorker and many others.