You may or may not remember that a while back I set myself a 6 week virtual decluttering challenge I christened Operation Less Information. I was feeling overwhelmed the noise in my online life and how it was spilling over into my everyday, and needed to do something about it. Well the six weeks have come and gone (and then some), so it’s time to whip out the red marker and see how I did.
To recap, here are the six things I committed to doing:
- Edit my subscriptions list. Unsubscribe from any inbox invaders that didn’t ‘spark joy’ (Kondo’s benchmark),
- Delete, file, move on. Plough through my inbox deleting the junk, plonking anything that hasn’t been done in a To Do folder, and anything I’d like to read but haven’t yet in a Reading folder.
- Minimise technological distractions. Limit myself to checking social media and emails twice a day (mornings and evenings) to minimise distractions.
- Switch email off my phone. Self explanatory.
- Use paper wherever possible. G’bye iPhone Notes, email reminders to myself, and alarms. Hello paper lists, paper reminders, paper diary, paper everything.
- Read real books. I tasked myself with reading one whole (real) book once a week for six weeks.
So how did it go?
Truthfully, not brilliantly!
- I whittled down my inbox to nothing, unsubscribed galore, and filed and archived as needed. However I wasn’t disciplined about maintaining my emails moving forwards, so it didn’t stay uncluttered for long.
- I was more productive, less distracted and generally much better off for only checking my mail twice a day instead of on an ad hoc basis. But for some bizarre reason I switched it back on few weeks shy of the challenge deadline. And soon felt overwhelmed by all the messages being thrown at me all day. Old (stupid) habits die hard.
- I did manage to reduce my reliance on online reminders completely, resorting entirely to paper lists and my diary, which definitely helped reduce the virtual clutter and noise levels significantly.
- However I dipped into Instagram far more often than my twice a day quota, which made me realise that there is a bit of an undisciplined compulsion there that I need to work on.
- And I only read a grand total of one and a half books in six weeks, so not even half way to my overly ambitious goal of 6 titles.
In a nutshell: I did not tick as many boxes or change as many habits as I was hoping to. Mainly because, in hindsight, life took over, I lost my focus, and I was not intentional about incorporating my experiment into my everyday.
So was the challenge an outright failure? Not entirely.
Because as I am learning, it is ok to try something new, make mistakes or fall short of the goals set, dust yourself off and make a plan to do better next time.
The 4 things I learned from failing to simplify my screen-time:
- Do one thing well, instead of trying to do lots of things half heartedly. I think my biggest mistake was to be overly ambitious in trying to make six big changes simultaneously. Next time I would aim to adopt one change a week for six weeks, to increase the likelihood that any improvements would stick long-term and become life long habits. Slow and sustainable change is definitely the way forward.
- Make the plan actionable, and write those actions in the diary.
- My challenge never stood a fighting chance because it never made it into my every day lists of things to do and targets to work towards. Which is odd because I know better from working through courses like Make Over Your Mornings (which I HIGHLY recommend by the way) but there you go. It was good to remember the hard way that if I would like to take up a new habit like reading one book a week, I need to set specific goals and work them into my schedule and daily planner.
- I think I would have done better to break the goals down further into bite-sized chunks and actionable, flexible targets, like “read two chapters a day” or “aim to 30 minutes a day reading without interruptions”. So when it comes to emails, going forwards I’ll be archiving, filing or deleting everything else as soon as I’ve read it.
- I do not need emails on my phone. Switching them off my smartphone radically quieted the noise in my everyday and helped keep my head-space clearer. Not checking emails until after I had done things like spent some quiet time reading, and prepping everyone for the school run meant that I was more efficient and focussed on my personal priorities. I think it is because I wasn’t letting myself be distracted by the agendas, ideas and actionable items hitting in my inbox. I’ll definitely be doing this more often, if not permanently.
- I need to be offline more often. I knew this already, but it was good to be reminded that I do not need to be connected to my phone, contacts, social media or inbox all the time. I might want to, but I do not need to. Key difference. What I do need is to carve out more day to be more connected to myself, be honest about how I am feeling, and create space in my everyday to meet those needs and engage properly with the people I love, instead of technology and time wasters.
So there you have it, an honest look at challenge tried and failed, and the lessons learned along the way.
Do let me know if you have any ideas of your own on how to simplify your online life and be more intentional about how you spend your technology time. I would love to hear from you. And sign up for the newsletter if you would like to receive monthly emails from me.