Ilios Digital Organizing Blog

11 December 2018

Keeping in touch when you’re away

Productivity

All the mental health articles tell us to, but do you ever manage to leave your email behind? I’ll admit that it’s the first thing I check when I get up in the morning, and I usually check it again right before I get ready for bed. Not because there is usually anything urgent, but it’s more of a habit than anything else. There are some days, though, where we do want to leave email behind. Vacation time, baby leave, even sick days are times when you might not be in your inbox regularly. I know that as entrepreneurs, ignoring email isn’t really an option. However, there are things you can do to manage expectations for those who are trying to get in touch with you when you’d rather be out of touch.

If you need to be away from your email, or just aren’t going to be able to check it frequently, set an out of office style message. I’ve received auto responses from people that said “Hi! I check my mail once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and will follow up with you shortly. If this is urgent, please feel free to call me.” Although this person probably wasn’t out of the office, I knew that they would get back to me, just not right away. If it had truly been an urgent matter, the phone was right there.

Another option if you want to be or need to be away from your email as much as possible, is to create canned responses. These are template answers to your most common questions. Although the how varies, you can set up templates in most email programs. Having a set of canned responses means that when you do check your email you can take two minutes to customize an already created response rather than taking 5 or more minutes writing one from scratch. No, this won’t cover all emails you receive but should help out some.

Finally, if you have to be away from your email but can’t quite leave it behind, set a schedule for when you’ll check it. Like above, pick a time in the morning or a time in the afternoon and try to stick with it. It might also help to turn off those notifications you get on your phone or computer. You don’t need the digital equivalent of a toddler tugging at your clothes every time an email arrives. Email isn’t going away, but we can manage it, instead of letting it manage us!

Interested in more productivity tips? Schedule a Discovery Call and let’s talk about how to get you more time and less stress!

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Ilios Digital Organizing Blog

1 March 2023

Are You Seeing Double?

Productivity

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

Digital Organizing, Productivity

9 March 2022

Decreasing the noise of daily life

Productivity

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?

2 February 2022

An App for Everything

Productivity

How’s it going getting started with digital minimalism?

Last time we talked about RescueTime and figuring out how much time you actually spend on your digital devices and what you’re doing when you are there.  Were there any surprises? Did you get a good idea of where you are spending your time when you are online? Did you look just at your computer, or did you also install RescueTime on your phone?

Our phones are full of fun things and interesting information, but they’re also a big source of distracted time suck. Not only using the apps, but scrolling and scrolling past screens of other apps to get to the one you want.

Take a look at your phone. How many apps do you have? More than 20? More than 50? (approx. 140 for me – that was a surprise!)

How many of those apps are you actually using? And have you thought about why you’re using those particular apps?  Does each app have a purpose beyond ‘fun when I’m bored’?

(Some of that is okay, but part of digital minimalism is acting with intent.)

Just like we declutter our houses, we also need to declutter our phones. Next time you’re sitting in front of the TV, or waiting in the pick-up line, find those seldom used or unnecessary apps and delete them. It’s a great way to minimize your digital clutter and work towards minimalism.

Rather receive these posts in your email? Head on over and sign up for the Ilios Digital Organizing newsletter!

19 January 2022

The first step is awareness

Productivity

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

Productivity

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!

Want to get this information in your inbox? Click to sign up for the Ilios Digital newsletter!

Ilios Digital Organizing Blog

1 March 2023

Are You Seeing Double?

Productivity

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

Digital Organizing, Productivity

9 March 2022

Decreasing the noise of daily life

Productivity

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?

2 February 2022

An App for Everything

Productivity

How’s it going getting started with digital minimalism?

Last time we talked about RescueTime and figuring out how much time you actually spend on your digital devices and what you’re doing when you are there.  Were there any surprises? Did you get a good idea of where you are spending your time when you are online? Did you look just at your computer, or did you also install RescueTime on your phone?

Our phones are full of fun things and interesting information, but they’re also a big source of distracted time suck. Not only using the apps, but scrolling and scrolling past screens of other apps to get to the one you want.

Take a look at your phone. How many apps do you have? More than 20? More than 50? (approx. 140 for me – that was a surprise!)

How many of those apps are you actually using? And have you thought about why you’re using those particular apps?  Does each app have a purpose beyond ‘fun when I’m bored’?

(Some of that is okay, but part of digital minimalism is acting with intent.)

Just like we declutter our houses, we also need to declutter our phones. Next time you’re sitting in front of the TV, or waiting in the pick-up line, find those seldom used or unnecessary apps and delete them. It’s a great way to minimize your digital clutter and work towards minimalism.

Rather receive these posts in your email? Head on over and sign up for the Ilios Digital Organizing newsletter!

19 January 2022

The first step is awareness

Productivity

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

Productivity

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!

Want to get this information in your inbox? Click to sign up for the Ilios Digital newsletter!