From the course: Time Management Tips

Creating your digital-free zone

From the course: Time Management Tips

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Creating your digital-free zone

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- Technology is a powerful tool. It helps us get more done, it helps us communicate faster, it gives us a world of options right at our fingertips, but is it too powerful? Occasionally, it's so seductive and alluring that we just have to constantly be looking at our phones and our devices. This is why I recommend that we occasionally create a sanctuary from these digital devices. Now if you think about what a sanctuary is in real life, it's a special place set aside to protect something such as nature or animals. Well, you want to have your sanctuary, a place where you can go to protect your mind and your emotions and your thoughts, so that you can be calm, and then go back to work and use technology later. Let's talk about a few ways that we can make this happen. First of all, you can create a schedule of when you're not going to touch technology, such as a day of the week or the month or an hour in the day. I have a client who has something that she calls Monkdays within her month, and she uses those to think as if she is a monk where she sets aside technology and allows herself to be visionary and strategic for the coming month. A second way to do this is to create a specific location where you don't touch technology. For instance, it can be a park, when you're outside and you're at that place, you know I don't use the phone here, or it can be a room in your house or in the office. Many families establish the dinner table as a place where no one should use their technology. Having a specific place lets your brain know when I'm sitting here, I can be free from technology. Third, you can use the settings of the devices themselves to establish a kind of sanctuary. For instance, you can set up quiet hours in the Windows platform if you go to the Action Center. Also, Android and iPhones have a Do Not Disturb setting where you can establish certain hours of the day where the phone doesn't notify you, doesn't ring, regardless of what's happening. And finally, I recommend that you just enjoy these little moments of sanctuary. Tell yourself that this is good. Recognize the peace that comes from occasionally taking a break. Yes, technology is powerful and it can make a huge impact in your productivity, but you can also be more productive when you occasionally take a break from it.

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