1 March 2023

Are You Seeing Double?

April Merritt
Productivity

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Are you having trouble sticking with a task that you find boring or cumbersome? Like clearing out your email backlog or moving a mess of files into folders. You know how to do it, it’s just making the time to do it. Especially when you’d rather do anything else. So the project sits, unfinished.

This is the reality for many of my clients. And one of the reasons I encourage the use of Action Sessions – a dedicated time together to tackle the “boring” tasks with someone holding you accountable.

That accountability is a big deal for me. Like many people, I tend to get more work done when I know someone is watching me work. It’s why I love having an accountability partner and participating in co-working sessions – they are both forms of body doubling.

Body doubling is a productivity/accountability trick where you have someone present to keep you focused on your task. Your body double may sit there quietly and watch you work, or maybe they are working on their own task while you work on yours. Some body doubles even may carry on a conversation with you while you do a more mindless task like cleaning out your sock drawer. The best thing? Body doubling can be done virtually as well as in person!

“How to ADHD” has a great video about body doubling on YouTube that explains the concept.  Or give me a call and we can talk about the benefits. And if you’re one of my clients and you’re still trying to tackle that overloaded inbox, let’s get an Action Session scheduled so we can get that task finished.

Can’t wait to hear from you!

13 April 2022

Decluttering vs Minimalism

April Merritt
Digital Organizing, Productivity

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9 March 2022

Decreasing the noise of daily life

April Merritt
Productivity
Digital Minimalism, Productivity
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It can be hard to think about minimalism in the noise and rush of our busy lives. There’s always something else to do, listen to, or respond to. Our phones go off at all hours of the day, demanding our attention.  I give my husband a hard time because he has email notifications on and I’ll be just about ready to fall asleep when ‘bing’, a new email from Amazon or Ebay or someone like that.

Part of our journey towards digital minimalism involves downsizing and streamlining. App notifications – both phone and computer – are an easy place to make those changes.

Now, there are some notifications we definitely need – text messages are usually on that list, especially for parents. But there are a lot of notifications we can remove from our daily schedule. Do you really need to be pinged when an email comes in or are you checking email on your own schedule? How about this week’s cookie notification from Crumbl? Or an alert when the litter box is full?

(That last one  is a definite yes for me!)

Digital minimalism looks different for each of us. When minimizing notifications, it’s up to each of us to stop and think about why we need to be notified, what purpose the notification is serving, and what we do because of the notification. (How we respond is key to finding our distraction points during the day) Then we can make deliberate decisions about what stays and what goes.

How is your journey into digital minimalism going? Any surprises? Anything I can do to support you?

19 January 2022

The first step is awareness

April Merritt
Productivity
Digital Minimalism
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After our talk last week about digital minimalism, I had a reader mention the phrase ‘attention management’ when it comes to working with intent. It’s a great phrase because, with our digital life, so much of what we do is mindless.

This is especially true when it comes to surfing and Internet usage. How many times have you fallen down an Internet rabbit hole? Or turned on your phone just to kill time while waiting?

We all get caught up sometimes, and the first part of minimizing your digital use is figuring out how you actually use your time. I use a great software called RescueTime that tracks your digital activity across all devices it is installed on – phone, computer, Internet, and tablet. The software allows me to see, for example, that I spent 15 minutes playing Alien Hive on my phone last night when I could swear it was only a couple of minutes before bedtime.

I’ve written an App Review on RescueTime before, which you can find here: App Review – RescueTime

Check it out. It’s a great tool to try as we work on digital minimalism.

Questions? Let me know! Otherwise, I’ll see you next time!

12 January 2022

Starting with Digital Minimalism

April Merritt
Productivity
Digital Minimalism
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We all want a more peaceful life. Less stress, less clutter. The minimalists out there say the way there is through less stuff and more intention.

There are Instagram feeds and Facebook groups devoted to decluttering your kitchen, your closet, any part of your house. But in a world full of tech and information streams and social media, what does digital minimalism look like?

It’s more than just organizing your files or purging your email. More than giving up Facebook for a month or two. Digital minimalism is about being intentional with how you spend your time online. Intentional with what you consume and how you consume it.

Cal Newport, the writer of “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world”,  defines digital minimalism as “a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

Easy enough to say. But not necessarily easy to do.  There’s a lot of noise out there and a lot of suggestions of what to do to embrace digital minimalism.  A lot of discussion about how much minimalism is enough.

According to research, you’re likely to check email and chat every 6 minutes, spend 4 hours or so on your phone a day, and use something like 50 or more tools and apps a day.  Few of us want to give up technology and all the great things the Internet has to offer. But there is a way to minimize your tech without giving everything up.

How to turn down the noise and surf with intent is going to be our focus for the next couple of months.  We’ll talk about apps, notifications, values, and goals as they relate to digital minimalism.

Stay tuned for more details!

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1 September 2021

How to Clear Your Digital Desktop

April Merritt
Digital Organizing, Productivity
desktop, digital organizing
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A clean desk is a sign of a disturbed mind.


I saw that once on a coffee mug and laughed. Of course, it’s not true. It isn’t, right? : )


Regardless of whether you are working at home or in an office, we all have a desk of sorts. It might be the dining room table or a dedicated desk in your private office. When it’s clean, work is easier. You can find what you need quickly and the things that need your attention are front and center.  All things that can lead to increased productivity.


The same is true for your digital desktop. Clear away the unnecessary icons and save the documents to the documents folder instead of on the desktop.  Get rid of old downloads and program icons you no longer need. Doing so will provide you a clean slate when you sit down at your desk in the morning. 

And a clean, organized desk, is a sign of a productive mind.

Need help clearing your desktop? Let me know! Sign up for a Discovery Call today and we’ll talk!

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