3 Easy Ways to Make Your Workflow More Peaceful
If you’re a business owner, or even just a super busy and overwhelmed human, you might find yourself regularly asking semi-hypothetical questions to no one, like, “When can I just catch a break?”—and actually hoping someone will answer.
It’s hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes when it comes to finding free, easy ways to add peace to your days that don’t require tons of time. (90 minutes of yoga? Sure, that sounds great and all, but who has time to change clothes, drive over to the town the studio’s in, find and pay for parking, dash to the class, calm their mind, go home, shower, and re-assimilate into life? Seriously, who are these people?)
Luckily, sometimes the answer is staring us right in the face; we’ve just been looking at it so long we don’t really see it anymore. Today I’ve got 3 examples of just that phenomenon, and I’ll be shocked if more than one of these little tweaks doesn’t work for you! Fun fact: I genuinely use all of these to stay sane in my hectic life. Are you ready?
ELIMINATE SOCIAL FOLLOWS THAT DON’T SERVE YOU
Did you know the average person spends more than 2 hours per day on social media? That’s over 2 hours of content consumption—news, memes, video parodies, podcast snippets, status updates, photos, and more. That means over the course of a year, close to 1000 hours per person are spent consuming content… often without any sort of intention or accountability.
There’s an expression that says people are the sum of the 5 people they spend the most time with. These days, any number of those 5 people could be people or accounts a person spends time with on social media. By eliminating negative influences, noise, or content that doesn’t support your goals in life right now, you could actually change not only how you feel and where your time goes, but who you are.
For me, it’s important not to follow any content creators whose brand is all about being super-charged and fired up, ready for a debate or a fight at the drop of a hat… because that energy will stay with me long after I’ve read an article or watched a video. So I try to avoid following or sharing any content like that in the first place… However, brands do change over time, and the algorithms of all our social channels tend to show us more of whatever we recently spent time reading or watching, so even if I watch something negative or super-charged that a friend of mine shared, I might be impacted. So it’s not enough to just “plan” not to follow accounts that aren’t right for me. It takes a little more thought.
I started a habit a few years ago of going through the accounts/profiles I follow (particularly on Instagram, since I spend the most of my social media time there), once a quarter, and just unfollowing any account that doesn’t add value to my life anymore. This made a radical difference in my quality of life. Often the accounts I unfollow are accounts I don’t even remember following in the first place!
Another little hack that I used to not even have the option to do but has become available in more recent years is “muting” real people I follow so they don’t see me disappear, but I don’t have to see what they publish every day. Amazing!
If you want to add a little more peace and light to your days, I recommend adopting this practice. Set aside some time this weekend and go through even just one of your social channels—the one where you spend the most time—and unfollow (or mute) anything that doesn’t light you up. See what a difference it makes!
UNSUBSCRIBE FROM UNNECESSARY EMAILS
This is very similar. According to a 2019 article on sleep, more than half of Americans start their days by checking their email. Wow.
I personally try not to do this because I know it can send my day into a tailspin, especially since I work from home—I’d rather make sure I stretch and do a little exercise, eat a well-rounded breakfast, pray, shower, and get dressed before I tackle my inbox; that way I start balanced and in control.
Nevertheless, it’s not enough to simply put off checking email to be sure that email doesn’t totally drain my day. Here are a few practices I keep in this area:
I keep a separate email account for promotions and sales… and I rarely check it. I don’t even remember when I started doing this, but it had to have been in high school or college. I realized that if I didn’t want to spend all my money every time it came in, I needed to stop seeing when sales were happening at my favorite stores—that I only wanted to know about a sale if I was already in the market for something. So I opened a separate email account I could use when a cashier asked for my email address at checkout, or when a promotional pop-up online offered me 15% off for my email address, and from that point on I only checked that inbox when I knew I’d be shopping for something specific—I’d run a quick search through my inbox and see if there were any deals going on for that item. I also use it every Christmas, and it saves me a lot of money! In between, though, I don’t get distracted in my work inbox or personal inbox by sales, which helps keeps my day on track.
When I subscribe to something I think will add value to my business or daily living and use the email address I check daily, I unsubscribe after a period if I realize I’m not opening the emails anymore. At this point in my business, I get anywhere between 15 and 50 emails per day from people who actually want to talk to me—so I can’t afford to gum up the works with tips from Tailwind or articles from Brunchwork that I’m never even going to open. Sometimes it hurts a little, but I’ll unsubscribe, knowing it’s going to make my days a little smoother and my work flow a little easier.
REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE THE BOSS—DON’T START UNTIL YOU’RE READY
Especially as a woman (sorry to fit the stereotype, but I totally do), I do a lot for my household in addition to running my business… things which I don’t always get credit for.
It would be (and often has been) easy to get overwhelmed really fast when the demands are coming in faster than I can fulfill them. So I try, as often as I can, to step back and remember this: I’m the Boss.
No matter how crazy things feel, ultimately I’m the boss of my business and of my life—and while I do plan to keep the commitments I’ve already made, most things I’m being asked to do in any given moment are not as urgent as I or the people around me can feel like they are. In one year, it will not make a difference in most cases if I do That Thing right this second or I get to it after I’ve had a coffee and written out my complete to-do list for the day. It actually does make a difference to enter the tasks you take on Empowered.
This really does require some mindset-shifting; it usually isn’t something you can start doing overnight. And even when you do become good at it, sometimes life will just throw you so many curveballs you’ll wonder if you even are the boss of your life anymore… but you are. You get to control how you respond to the stimuli around you. So as often as you can, slow yourself down in the moments that feel like they’re spiraling, and remind yourself: I am the Boss. The rest of the world will wait for me.
Was this helpful? If so, share the article somewhere where others can be helped by it, too! Then pin the article so you never lose it. If there was an idea here that was particularly powerful for you, I’d love to hear about it below in the comments! I’ll be sure to respond ASAP and encourage you on your journey.
HELLO! MY NAME IS ALEXIS.
Coffee lover, day dreamer, foodie, and creative. I believe in doing what you can with what you have where you are. I blog to help you do more with what you have. I hope you love it here!
