Reset Your Digital Office | Part 2

Reset your digital office. Create space for creativity, productivity, and excellence in your day. We will do this by organizing your cloud, desktop, and mobile devices. 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Digital clutter weighs us down with things that no longer serve us. This happens because we have an “infinite” amount of cloud space to save everything. But, we rarely refer back to them. We save things for fear of losing something we might need later. This practice leads to mental clutter when overused both in our homes and offices. 

Clutter whether digital or physical creates stress, impedes productivity, and slows down our progress forward.

Key for Activities

Completing these activities will not give you the perfect digital office. It will give you habits to implement and tips to help you create space (visually and digitally) to do your best work!!

• ✅ Tasks
• 📌 Tips
• 🔁 Habit

Spend a minimum of 5-10 minutes each day completing the exercises below. If the activity takes you longer, continue or schedule a time to come back to it.

Create Filters

Filter Content – social media

Every day you choose what influences your creativity, ideas, productivity, and thoughts. How can you make social media work for you? We get to curate our experience on social media by who we follow, what we read and watch. Is it elevating you or a mere distraction?

✅ ACTION STEPS

1. Edit your “follow list”. What profiles (brand or person) no longer educate or inspire you to grow into your next level?
   • I am giving you permission to unfollow acquaintances, friends, former clients, industry colleagues, and self-imposed obligatory follow backs who don’t add value. Follow backs don’t determine IRL relationships. 
2. Manage your time. How much time do you want to spend on each platform or social media altogether? iOS has a built in tool to measure time spent. I keep it visible on my phone. There are Chrome plugins available to help you manage your time when on a desktop.
   • Create a list of things you want to do instead of spend time on social media.
     • Read a book
     • Work on a project
     • Paint your nails
     • Call a friend or family member
     • Cook or bake a new recipe
     • Get outside and walk
     • Exercise

By filtering the content you consume you creating space for your own thoughts, ideas, and creativity. This allows you time to reflect to figure out what you like, enjoy, believe in, and value instead of being influenced by others. Too much time-consuming peoples’ ideas instead of your own creates homogenization. Everything starts to look the same.

My follow list is small. My desire is to be able to interact and respond to the people I follow. To be social. I can’t do this when I’m following hundreds of people or F4F (follow for follow).

🔁 Add 1 | Unfollow 1

We have the ability to follow anyone and everyone. It doesn’t mean we should. We have a limited capacity for consumption. More time spent consuming means less creating.

Filter Content – Communities

Online communities include groups hosted on Discord, Facebook, Mighty Networks, Slack, Pinterest boards, group chats, and private platforms. Communities include free and paid membership. How can you make the most of your time in these communities? 

✅ ACTION STEPS

1. Filter your communities. What is the benefit of participating? Benefits can include accountability, coaching, relationships building with peers, referrals, and leads. If you aren’t actively participating, why are you there? What is the culture of the community? Are you challenged to learn, inspired to create, energized by the conversations? Or do you feel drained, left out, or overlooked?
2. Schedule time to check-in. Are contributing to the value of the community? You can do this with quick daily check-ins or longer weekly check-ins. Schedule time that works best for your schedule and community engagement.
3. Close doors. It is natural to outgrow relationships and interests. Communities that no longer align with your growth can be left. Create room for new doors and opportunities.

Filtering your communities allows you more time to create higher quality interactions where you stay. We can’t do it all and do it well. Don’t let FOMO keep you in places you’ve outgrown.

Filter Content – email inbox

Leading teams and managing projects across departments requires good communication. In order to respond timely with the needed information, I created a system. The processes in the system helped me stay organized and calm under pressure.

✅ ACTION STEPS

1. Update your email signature. I have a different signature for new emails (detailed) than replies (basic).
   • Does your signature include the necessary contact information?
   • If it includes links, do the links work?
   • If necessary for your profession, do you have the appropriate legal disclaimers?
   • Logo or profile pictures are helpful but don’t always show across email platforms.
2. Update your out-of-office template. Your OOO email should be concise and let the recipient know when they can expect a reply. It is not the place for an FAQ directory. 
   • “I’m out of the office until Thursday, January 14, 2021. I’ll respond to your email upon my return. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Sarah (sarah@youraddress.com).”
3. Create or review your folders. Folders will look different for each of us. I use the same organization method across my business. Folders are by the department for both emails and Google Drive. Each marketing vendor has its own subfolder under marketing. Consistency across platforms makes it easier for productivity and delegation.
4. Filter your emails. I have three email accounts and two of them have strong boundaries.
   • My business email (@melissakayjones.com) is strictly for you, client conversations, and business finances. I don’t use this email for any newsletters. Only the critical apps (ex: accounting) use this email. This makes it a lot easier to manage my inbox.
   • My personal email (@gmail) is solely for friends and family. Occasionally you may see it due to shared Google documents, but I don’t conduct business conversations with that account.
   • My secondary personal email (@yahoo) is the recipient of all newsletter subscriptions, apps, and product updates. This allows me to read these emails at my leisure.
5. Unsubscribe. If there are emails you never open, but feel obligated to keep (industry friend, FOMO, etc.) go ahead and unsubscribe. Staying without opening and clicking is worse than unsubscribing. Email service providers weigh the open and click rate of campaigns. The higher the engagement the less likely your email ends up in the SPAM folder.
6. BONUS: Create inbox rules. In Outlook, I color code “working” emails by project (Academy, Mastermind, Coaching, etc). This color-coding aligns with my calendar for time-blocking projects. In Gmail, you can use labels for the same purpose.

🔁 As you read through new emails review each one. Then decide to keep or unsubscribe. If you Keep it, is it going to the right inbox (business vs personal)? If not, then update your email preferences.

Filter Your Time

How do you protect your time? Or do you try to do it all? Have you allowed interruptions to become normal? The key to managing your time is planning ahead instead of being reactionary. Planning ahead means scheduling your priorities, creating flex time, and letting non-urgent/non-important tasks fill in the gaps.

✅ ACTION STEPS

1. Schedule your standing commitments. If you have weekly or monthly meetings with your clients, vendors, or team, block those out now. Do you need to stop working by 5pm to spend time with family? Put it in your calendar. Your calendar should reflect your priorities. 
2. Schedule in your personal well-being. I’m the first one who can work through lunch and/or eat at my desk. However, our body needs us to take care of it. This allows us to be at our best and brightest so we can better serve others, create, and problem solve. I purposely schedule my workouts in the middle of the day because it is a forced break.
3. Create time blocks for your primary projects each week. Each week I know I will be working on projects or tasks for the 3 different segments of my business, plus I need time for working on my business. These 4 areas each get a 2-hour time block. 

📌 I color-code my calendar by category.  Corresponding emails are also color-coded. This makes it easy for me to manage projects.

4. Define your daily priorities. Each day, I define the top 3 priorities I have to accomplish. Everything else is a bonus! I learned this from using Whitney English’s Day Designer planner for 6 years.
5. Schedule flex time. I realize this sounds like an oxymoron. Experience tells us we can’t control our days. There will be unexpected surprises. I schedule flex time in the afternoons. This gives my calendar space for appointments, coffee dates, running to the post office, or to continue working on a project.
6. Review your scheduler. If you use a service like Acuity or Calendly, review your availability and appointment types to make sure they are accurate.

📌 I insert emails into calendar appointments as attachments. It makes it easy for me to then reference the previous discussion when I have a call.

Filtering your calendar is scheduling your priorities and saying no to things that don’t support them!

📌 Scheduling recurring meetings for the same day and time helps with attendance and preparation for all parties involved.

🔁 Each week define your top 3 projects and schedule them in your calendar. Then each day review your top 3 priorities/tasks for the day. By keeping it focused and simple you can accomplish the important and still manage the urgent non-important tasks that will arise.

I hope the information and tips shared in Part 1 and Part 2 help you create a system that works for you and your business. Check back later for Part 3 of Reset Your Digital Office!

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