Gex X Style Meditation: The Joy of Listening to an Album All the Way Through

I try not to start conversations with things like “When I was a kid, we…” or “Back in the day, I…” too often (though my kid may disagree) because it makes me feel old and, really, who wants to listen to people preach about “the way things used to be”? However, as someone who was born at the tail end of the Gen X generation and who is part of the last group to come of age before the internet and digital took over, sometimes I’m hit with how things have changed and some of the little (and big) things we’ve lost.

I was in the car the other day and an Alanis Morissette song came on. When it was done, I immediately started singing the next song on the Jagged Little Pill album. Why? Because in high school I listened to that CD over and over and OVER again (sorry, Mom), and I listened to it from start to finish. So the songs don’t just exist as separate entities to me but as one complete body of work. (My car, like most others, only held one CD or cassette at a time, so I would have to choose what I was listening to for that car ride and go with it.)

And it hit me in that moment in the car that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that—listened to one album all the way through. Or even one artist for multiple songs in a row. Like most everyone else, my music is now digital and I have my Spotify on shuffle, so I just listen to what comes up on that playlist. That’s convenient and fine, but in that moment in the car, I realized that something was also lost in that process.

An album tells a story. Artists think about which order songs should go in, and there’s a reason why they put one in front of another. There’s a reason why they opened with song A and closed with Song Z. (There were even sometimes hidden tracks tucked behind that last song if you didn’t stop playing the album when the last song was over.) With the new digital format, most of us are cherry-picking the songs we want. The hits. The songs that aren’t necessarily radio-friendly or ones that have less mass appeal get lost in the shuffle. Some of my favorite songs ever were songs that weren’t the ones released on the radio. And now I’m probably missing out on some great songs by artists I like.

So this week, I’ve made a point to go into my Spotify and choose an artist/band I enjoy and just hit play on one of their albums. Then, I let it go from start to finish without skipping around or shuffling. I’ve discovered some great new songs by artists/bands I love, and it’s felt…calming and almost meditative—even if it’s loud rock music. There’s something extra satisfying about the focus of it all. One artist/band, one album in time, one complete journey. I’m really digging it.

So, let me say in my best old lady voice, “Back in my day, we listened to the whole damn thing, and you should give that a try, too.” ;)

My favorite full album listen this week: A War on Everything by The Glorious Sons . (And if you haven’t discovered The Glorious Sons yet, you’re welcome.)

Do you ever do this—listen to an album all the way through? What have been some of your favorite listens?

On Craving Quiet (Or Where I've Been)

When I was growing up, quiet wasn’t a good word. At least when it was directed your way as a kid or teen. “Roni’s quiet.” That meant you were a little weird, a little different, that you had a problem you needed to work on. I didn’t disagree that it could be a difficult thing to be, especially when you’re younger. But I also knew it wasn’t something I could change no matter how much I wanted to transform into the bubbly social butterfly. Fundamentally, I was a quiet, in-my-head kind of kid. So it’s not shocking that I’ve grown into a quiet, in-my-head adult. The only thing that’s different now is that I have no interest in changing that aspect of myself. Being quiet is what let me observe people and the world when no one even realized I was paying attention. Being quiet is what helped me weave imaginary stories in my head. Being quiet gave me this job of being a writer.

However, even as a writer—a field full of introverts (though not all writers)—there are still many outward things required. Chatting with readers. Promoting books. Blog tours. Interviews. Podcasts. Facebook groups. And for me, now that I’m also teaching writing classes, teaching and being on video.

Even though I’m quiet, I can do those things. I can truly enjoy those things. But…they require a lot of what my friend and author/coach Becca Syme calls “energy pennies.” When it comes to introverts, we can drain our bank accounts quickly with all the things that aren’t “sitting in our office, being a hermit, and writing a book.”

Usually, I’m pretty good about balancing things. I know that I need quiet downtime in between the outward-facing stuff. But over the past few months, we added a big stressor to the mix. We put our house of 13 years on the market, searched for a new one, and then moved (the day after Christmas no less) to a rural-ish area an hour away—which means new school for kidlet, new doctors, new everything, etc.

I’m so happy we’ve landed where we have, but it took ALL the energy pennies to get here. And then I had a new book come out Dec. 31. So what little energy stores I had left went to that. Which has left me in total hermit mode.

I have a tendency to retreat when I’m stressed. Y’all have seen me do things like the monthlong social media ban. Pulling back and being quiet refuels my tank. It also gives me the vital brain space needed to create new stories. I planned to start a new book at the beginning of this month, but I’m just now getting to the point where inklings of ideas and words are coming back to me. I planned to teach my Love Scenes class at the beginning of February, but I will need to push that back. I had to get really quiet. Read. Binge TV. Cook. Watch a lot of sunsets. Spend time with my family. (Unpack approximately eleventy million boxes.) Teen Me would apologize for retreating into my cave. Adult Me knows it’s the only way for me to not burn out completely.

So yes, “Roni’s quiet.” But I’m still here. Working. And hopefully coming up with stories that you’ll want to read. :)

What do you do when you get overwhelmed?

Seeking Balance: The Friday-Only Social Media Plan

In the past few months, I’ve been blogging a lot about my relationship with social media and figuring out how to manage distractions. Really, it’s been a topic on my mind for years, and I’ve come at it in a number of different ways.

If you missed those posts, here’s a quick recap. In February, I did a month with no social media or what Cal Newport calls a digital declutter. I went into my reasons in that initial post. I completed the month successfully and recapped what the experience was like, what I learned, and what I was going to try to do going forward. I also did a post about how I’ve retrained my brain for Deep Work over a two and a half year time period by limiting distractions. Then most recently, I blogged about how, after all this work to corral my own distractions, I didn’t want to be a distraction for you, so I wrote about what I would share and not share online going forward in my post I Am Not Here to Distract You.

See? Told you I’ve been a bit obsessed with this topic, lol. And that’s not even counting all my Device-Free Summer posts about my kidlet from years past.

So, here I am talking about it again because since that month without social media, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to recapture the benefits of that fast while still maintaining a social media presence—something that is a part of my job as a writer. In my post where I outlined what I hoped to do going forward to tame social media, I had high hopes. But I admit that I haven’t stuck to a big chunk of those plans (like only checking social media at lunch.) It’s frustrating.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that in most habits I want to break, I tend to be an abstainer and not a moderator. (I got this terminology from Gretchen Rubin. See: Are You an Abstainer or a Moderator?) A moderator is a person who can just have a little of something (hence, moderate.) So they want to eat less sugar, but they don’t have to give it up completely. They have the personality that can have one cookie a week and move on.

In the past, I fancied myself a moderator. Because in some situations, I am. (I can make Halloween candy last months. But that’s because I only like candy a little bit.) However, in general, I’ve realized that I’m much more successful as an abstainer. It’s easier for me to have/do something none of the time than some of the time. For instance, about fifteen years ago I wanted to stop drinking soft drinks (diet or otherwise.) I failed at moderating. But once I said, no more, I am not a person who drinks soft drinks—then it was done. Fifteen years later, I still don’t drink them and I’m not tempted to. (This is coming from someone who used to drink like half a dozen Diet Mt. Dews a day.)

Abstaining takes the decision fatigue out of play. I just don’t do that, so there’s no debate to be had. That was why by the halfway point in the social media fast, I had this sense of ahh… I don’t have to think about that. The decision was made. I am not a person who does social media this month.

But, social media isn’t soft drinks. It’s a part of my job. It’s a part of life for most of us. It’s not as easy to just say no more ever. However, trying to moderate it hasn’t gone all that well for me. I’m not anywhere near where I was a few years ago or even pre-fast, but the impulse is still there, distracting me. Should I post? What should I post? I’m bored standing in line, let me look at Instagram. Did someone respond to my comment? How about now? Or now? (Note: I’m not making a moral judgement about social media. If you love it and it works for you, you do you. There are parts I love about it, too.)

So during this past month—which OMG May is trying to kill me with how busy it’s been with general life/family stuff—I’ve been trying to work through a very difficult block in the book I’m writing and finish up teaching my beginners romance writing course. Stress level has been high. I needed all my brain power to figure out the puzzle I’d written myself into and to be present for the students in my class. Posting on social media has mostly fallen by the wayside, but checking it…? Yeah, I’m reaching for it a lot because it’s a distraction from the hard things I’ve got to do.

This, of course, has got me thinking about how to find balance again. The next two months are going to be frenetic because I have a lot of writing to do, a family vacation, and then a trip to New York for RWA (which, of course, falls right before I’m supposed to turn in my book, arg.) I need to clear as much non-essential stuff off my plate as I can. Knowing all that made me want to do a summer-long social media break because: abstainer. But I know that’s not realistic for the long-term, so I’ve decided to try a variation.

I’m going to limit social media checking and posting to one day a week—Friday. This way, I don’t ignore people who have reached out to me and I can share/promote things if need be, but I don’t have a decision to make on a daily basis. I will only check it on Friday so that means every other day, the decision is already made. I’m hoping that will trick my abstainer brain into complying. ;)

I got the Friday idea from this post by Sol Orwell: How to Take Fridays “Off” (and still be insanely productive). The post isn’t about social media but more about how we tend to slack off on Fridays and a way to embrace that. So he reserves his Fridays for reading/learning for a few hours (he saves all the articles and such that he comes across during the week for this time) and also does networking on Fridays. That way, he’s still productive, but the things that could be distractions during the week have their place on his schedule. So taking a cue from him, I’m thinking my social networking can have a happy home on Fridays. I’ll also probably put “reply to non-urgent email” as a recurring task on that day as well. So then those things aren’t free-floating around in my head. They have a spot on the schedule and will be handled.

So starting tomorrow, I’m going to give this new plan a try and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work, it may be social media-free summer for me. But I’ll report back! And if you message me on social media and don’t get a reply for a little while, now you know why!

Have you found a great system to balance your social media or other distractions when you have a big project to work on?

I Am Not Here to Distract You: My New Social Media Promise

You know how sometimes random things come together in a way that makes you think of something in a different light? That’s partly a definition of creativity—seemingly disparate things/ideas being brought together to create something new. Well, yesterday I had a few things coincide that got me thinking about how I want to handle my online presence.

As many of you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about social media and distraction lately (and really for a number of years now.) Hence my 30-Day Social Media Declutter (which I wrote about here) and what I learned from it (which I wrote about here.) So this is a topic that is constantly buzzing at a low hum in my mind.

Yesterday, a few things happened that got my gears grinding about this topic again. First, I attended an online workshop about how to do social media well as an author. I enjoyed the workshop and appreciated the information. Much of it was about picking which platforms best suit you and how to be fun and on brand as an author. This can include things like posting funny memes, cute pet photos, and entertaining videos. Things many of us enjoy. Things that many authors do well.

However, when I imagined myself looking for fun cat videos to post or finding cute memes, I kind of winced inwardly because—wow, I see that distraction train roaring down the tracks straight for me. I don’t think I can trust myself to go searching for those things because a) I’ll get lost in the internet black hole (I mean, what’s more tempting than endless cute animal videos?) and b) my perfectionism will make me search endlessly for the “perfect” one to post. Plus, I don’t post photos that aren’t mine or aren’t paid for after getting sued years ago over using a photo on my blog. So, I listened to the advice but also knew that I couldn’t heed some of it. But let’s put a pin in that thought for a moment. Because…

Later that night, I was reading the essay collection On Being 40(ish). This was such a great read, and I really got a lot out of many of the essays. I know I’ll be revisiting a few of them. But one near the end called “I Don’t Have Time for This” by Sophronia Scott really resonated with me. In it, she talks about how her friend called her to be miserable about the election results together. Here’s an excerpt:

“My friend has called me to commiserate. But I’m not miserable. I haven’t given a thought to being miserable. The sun is pouring through the windows of my yellow kitchen, my family is healthy, my friend is on the phone, and I’m glad to hear her voice. So I will try to figure out how to gently put into words the overpowering feeling I have more and more as I walk through middle age: I don’t have time for this.”

She goes on to talk about how her son was a Sandy Hook student who was a few doors down from the shooting and survived and how that gave her new perspective on how precious time is and how it isn’t guaranteed. So, she chooses to focus on the joy in her life and not wallow in the misery. Not sticking her head in the sand but choosing joy in her every day life.

So what could this possibly have to do with me writing about social media? Well, here’s where my brain went. Life is precious. We get our particular amount of time on this planet and then it’s done. I’ll turn forty this year. What do I want to do with the rest of my time? How do I want to spend those limited minutes? Which led me to…

Do I want to spend my time searching for cute dog memes to post?

And secondly…

Do I want to contribute to using up YOUR minutes with trying to keep you looking at my page and distracting you from your life?

The answer felt really clear in that moment. I’m not here to distract you. I don’t want that to be part of my job. Yes, I want to write the best books I can, and some people might see reading romance as a distraction, but I see reading a good story as an experience or a chosen respite. Time reading a book rarely feels like wasted time to me—unless the book was terrible, lol. Even watching TV shows usually doesn’t feel like wasted time to me. A good story well told is something that makes me happier. But when I get lost in the internet hole of social media or random videos or top ten posts, I rarely feel better for it.

And frankly, with all my blogging about reclaiming focus and taking breaks from social media and doing device-free summers, it feels hypocritical of me to post fluff to keep algorithms fed and you seeing my page. Note: This is absolutely not a judgment of anyone who does post those things or the countless number of people who enjoy the content. My husband starts many of his days with cat videos because that gives him a happiness boost before he goes to work. There’s nothing wrong with that. This is not about what should be posted or shouldn’t. This is a personal decision about what I feel aligns with who I am and what I want to give you.

When you visit my blog or read my newsletter or see something on my Facebook page, I want you to feel like you’ve gotten something of value out of it. It doesn’t always have to be serious, of course. Despite the tone of this post, I’m not a particularly serious person. Fun and laughter have great value. But I also don’t want my contribution to be filler that I’m posting just to keep the algorithms happy and eyeballs on my sites. I want it to be things that aren’t on a million other pages. My goal for my blog is for you to walk away with something to think about or a great book recommendation or a new TV show to try out. My goal for my newsletter is to make it good enough that people would actually pay to subscribe to it (I’m not going to charge, don’t worry. But that’s how I judge how much I like a newsletter: would I pay a subscription fee for this?)

Basically, I want to add value not distract.

And yes, of course I want you to buy my books. I really, really do! :) My family likes to eat and, you know, have a roof over our heads and stuff. (So high maintenance!) But I have to believe that if I put everything I have into writing quality stories (which involves me concentrating and not spending too much time on social media either) that you will still buy my books—even if I’m not constantly in your feed reminding you that I’m alive and have something to sell.

How about this? I work to give you good things to read and aim not to waste your time. You occasionally buy one of my books and tell your friends to read them. Deal? ;)

My promise to you:

1. I won’t blog unless I feel I have something interesting to talk about or offer you.

2. My newsletter will remain focused on providing you with quality content. It’s full of these posts plus extra content including what I’m reading, what books I’ve bought lately, and behind the scenes photos.

3. All book recommendations on this blog or any of my social media channels will continue to be non-sponsored content. I don’t accept books for review, so anything I recommend is being recommended because I enjoyed it.

4. I will continue to write the best stories I can (which sometimes means being a slacker on social media.)

5. I will do my best not to waste your time and will be grateful for any time you choose to share with me.

Thank you for being here.

And if you want to keep up with my posts along with exclusive content, sign up for my newsletter. This is, by far, the easiest way to keep up with me, no social media checking required.

Have a great weekend!

What newsletter would you pay for? I’m always looking for great new ones to check out. :)

After the 30-Day Social Media Ban: What Surprised Me & What I'm Changing

A month ago, I posted here and announced that I was going on a monthlong Digital Detox/Social Media Ban. I made the decision to give it a try after reading Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism. You can read the original post here if you missed it. But now I’m back with my report from the land without social media!

To be honest, I didn’t expect this experiment to be all that revelatory. I have been working on dialing back my digital distractions for about two years now. I’ve been blogging about that journey along the way. I thought a month without social media would be a good break and “detox” because I was annoyed that I was checking my phone so often again. However, it ended up being a lot more enlightening than I ever expected.

First, a play-by play

Week 1 - This is harder than it looks

I went into this way too confident, y’all. Smug, even. I got this, I thought. Ha. Week One told me to have a seat and rethink that notion. The initial week was tough! I kept picking up my phone and swiping to the screen that usually held my social media apps, and I had nothing to push because I had deleted them. The reflex was a hard one to break.

Also, I had posted about my social media break, and I wanted to see what people had to say about it, but I couldn’t. The need to get that little mental boost (aka dopamine) that people are reading your posts was real. I had to take my social media shortcuts off my desktop because I found myself too tempted to “just check.”

My Book of the Month came in the mail, and I wanted to take a pic for Instagram, and I realized I had nowhere to post it. I didn’t take a pic. (This would become a theme. I took a lot less photos in general.)

Day 5 - The Black Moment

In fiction, you eventually lead characters to the “all hope is lost” moment, which we call the black moment. My black moment on this journey hit at Day 5. I was really missing chatting with people online and checking social media. I yearned for it, lol. I felt this haze of loneliness even though I was still texting with friends and had my family around me. Day 5 made me question whether I could do it.

My guess is that when people try these social media breaks and give up, it’s probably around this day in the process. But wait! Hold out! Because…

Day 6 - Holy productivity, Batman!

The day after I was missing social media, I sat down in my office and started a stretch of days that would become some of my most productive ever. This month, I was working on putting together a new online romance writing course for beginners. In three days, I wrote 17k words of lectures. I hit a level of flow and deep work that I didn’t think I was capable of. I blogged more about that here, but I was able to manage four hours straight of focused work without any struggle. I was so excited that I was getting so much done, the yearning for social media began its rapid decline.

Week 2 - Traveling & Scandal

I put a similar background on my phone to remind me what I should be doing instead of picking it up. This one is from Austin Kleon and you can grab it here.

During week two, I traveled with my family to Florida for the Daytona 500. This meant sitting in airports, flying on planes, and then having a lot of downtime in the hotel room in between races—all with no social media. Normally, I would’ve been posting photos from the trip and scrolling through my feeds. Instead, I read in the downtime. I ended up reading one and half books on the three-day trip. Also, in some of the downtime in the room, my family and I used the Heads Up app to play the game and fill the time. We ended up laughing to the point of tears. I’m not sure I would’ve thought to bring out the game if I hadn’t been on the social media fast. I was bored. It gave me the idea to play the family game.

It was a little strange not being able to post pictures or video from the trip, but that just meant that I could keep my phone tucked in my bag for most of the trip. I did share some photos in my newsletter.

Another thing that happened in week two was a big plagiarism scandal in the romance writing community. Normally, when this kind of thing happens, all the social media networks light up with the “breaking news” and then everyone’s take on it. I have lost whole days in the past following that kind of thing. Instead, because I wasn’t on social media, I was alerted about it by a friend via text, and she sent me the link for blog posts about it after the facts were straight. It was so much calmer learning about what was going on from a well thought-out blog post rather than the 100mph feeds and noise of social media. The lesson here was that I wasn’t uninformed. I still heard about it. But I could get the information in a calmer way.

Week 3 - I’m a believer

I stopped missing social media. I honestly, truly did. I was drunk on productivity and focus, y’all. Lol. Being able to have that level of intent focus and mental flow without even trying was like playing with a new toy. It reminded me of how things used to be when I was in high school and college, when I could deep dive into projects for hours at a time. I wrote a novel when I was fifteen. There’s no way that would’ve happened if I’d grown up with Facebook in my pocket. I used to be able to concentrate. Now, I had the ability back. It felt like magic.

Week 4 - Finishing and Fear

This past week, I had days where I worked in deep work mode for 7 hours, only stopping briefly midday to eat lunch. The online class I thought would take me another 3 weeks minimum to get ready was done. Not only done, but edited, uploaded, and open for enrollment. That is crazy banana pants to me. I finished the project almost a month ahead of schedule. I know it had everything to do with this experiment.

I use the music program Focus @ Will for background music, and it tracks how long you use it. I only have it on when I’m actively working. So this is what my days started to look like. That’s 7 hours of focused work if you’re math-challenged like I am. Seven hours!

However, with that thrill of success came a hint of fear about coming back to it all. I knew from the start that I wouldn’t leave social media forever. Beyond being part of my job, I am a member of a number of author groups online that truly bring me joy. BUT I didn’t want to lose this newfound superpower. I knew I needed to figure out a way not to fall back into old habit. So that’s what I’ll be talking about in the rest of this post.

But first, a recap of what I gotten done in a month without the social media distraction:

• Wrote 33k words of lectures for the class.

• Edited 55k words.

• Researched teaching platforms and learned how to use one.

• Created worksheets for the class.

• Blogged and wrote newsletters.

• Created a slideshow and promo video for the class.

• Loaded and formatted 7 weeks worth of lectures into the class platform.

• Rebuilt the format of my author newsletter.

• Set up text to speech on my blog (if you click the little button next to the title, it will read the post to you.)

• Read 8 books. Eight!

• Went on a vacation and didn’t work.

• Opened my course for enrollment (there are still a few spots left at the beta price if you’re interested)

• Spent more time with my family without my face in my phone

Observations

• I took less photos (not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.)

• The time I spent on my phone (according to Screen Time) was about 2 hours a day. This is down about an hour from usual (7 hours added to my week!) This experiment didn’t make me stop using my phone completely. Almost all time spent on it was text messaging, reading articles on Safari, and podcasts.

• The morning was often when I missed social media the most because my husband would grab for his phone, and I’d have nothing to do for those first few minutes before I got out of bed. I ended up reading articles most of the time.

• Sometimes it was inconvenient not to have Facebook simply for logistical purposes. Restaurants only had a FB page or I needed to access one of kidlet’s activities, but they do everything through FB.

• When I blogged, I had no way to share my posts outside of my newsletter, so that felt a little frustrating. (I could’ve shared it remotely without actually getting on social media, but that felt like cheating.)

• I didn’t miss anything urgent or important while I was gone. I signed on yesterday and had hundreds of notifications, but nothing was urgent. (Also I found out that Instagram only lets you look back through 2 weeks of notifications, so the other two weeks are lost unless someone tagged me.)

The biggest takeaway

This felt entirely different from the things I’ve done in the past like blocking social media for a few hours while I work or taking a digital sabbath. Those give you a break, but don’t impact the habit. I think this long of a break is much more disruptive in stopping bad patterns and clearing your mind so that you can look at social media with a more skeptical eye. You get a taste of what it’s keeping you from. For me, that was higher focus and productivity but also a sense of calm.

So if you’re thinking about doing something like this for yourself, give yourself the full month. Don’t trick yourself into thinking that quitting for the weekend is going to make any real difference. I also highly recommend reading Digital Minimalism first because Newport gives a lot of tips on how to best set yourself up for the 30 days. If you go cold turkey with no plan on what to replace that social media time with, you’re more likely to give up in that black moment.

Going Forward

Gretchen Rubin talks about in her book Better Than Before that some people are moderators and some are abstainers. Meaning, some people do better with creating a habit by completely abstaining from something: I never drink soft drinks. Others do better as moderators: I only drink soft drinks twice a week.

Most people think they’re moderators, but I have a feeling that more of us would be better as abstainers. There was relief in knowing checking social media wasn’t an option at all. There was no decision to be made. The line was clear. And really, that is how I quit soft drinks fifteen years ago. I went from a four-a-day Diet Mt. Dew habit to zero and never went back. Abstaining was the key for me.

However, with social media, abstaining isn’t realistic for me (and many of you) in the job I’m in. I also don’t want to lose the good things I enjoy about social media like my Facebook groups. But after this experiment, I know that I need to make some serious changes because I don’t want to give up the newfound focus and calm.

My plan for bringing social media back into my life

1. Put 20 minute daily limits (via Screentime feature) on Facebook and Instagram on my phone.

   I thought that the phone would be the biggest issue for me and, for a while, planned to not put Facebook back on it. But I realized through this experiment that the phone was much less of a problem than checking on my desktop and disrupting my work day. So I have put these two back on my phone but with strict limits.

   UPDATE (3.18.19): I’ve taken Facebook off my phone again. Having it back for a few days made me realize that even with my best intentions, I find myself checking it more than I want. The 20-minute limits were too easy to get by because I just had to click “ignore limit” and it opened. I’ve left Instagram on my phone because that app doesn’t call to me very much. I’m fine checking that one a time or two a day and that’s it.

2. Turned on the Downtime feature on my phone starting at 8pm and ending at 6am.

   This will keep my from randomly checking my phone while I’m watching TV with the fam and hanging out with them.

3. No more social media shortcuts on my desktop.

   They are way too easy to click when I hit a hard spot in my work.

4. I’m keeping Twitter off my phone.

   I was already doing this before and plan to continue.

5. Only check social media on my desktop at lunch time and on weekends.

   This is the one that’s still in flux. I have also considered using my Hey Focus blocking app and blocking access to social media in the morning work zone and afternoon work zone, but I almost feel like I need to lean on that abstainer concept and make it very clear: I only check social media on my computer at lunchtime and on weekends.

   UPDATE (3.18.19): This hasn’t worked so far. I find that I need to check at least Facebook in morning to clear out the messages and respond or not having checked it becomes the distraction. I may shift this to checking in the morning in an allotted time and then at lunch. Still working this one out.

I may tweak these or come up with different methods, but I’ll report back. I have a genuine worry that I’ll fall back into old patterns, and I really, really don’t want to. I have a new book to write, and I love having the focus superpower. I’m thinking of getting a cape. ;)

So…thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Anyone else going to try their own digital declutter?

And for any writers interested in my course, here’s the video with all the details. I’ll be closing registration soon because we’re getting close to full! Course starts March 30th.