Three Life Hacks to help you in 2021!
Johannesburg, South Africa (03 January 2021) – In 2020, I did 3 things – let’s call them Life Hacks – that completely changed my entire life and helped my mental health while coping with an intensely traumatic year.
I recently wrote about setting intentions instead of focusing on resolutions. New Year’s resolutions seldom work. Too often, we set “big changes” for ourselves, and we don’t take into account the massive lifestyle changes that come with some resolutions. After a little bit of time, the resolution becomes too much and is left by the wayside. On top that, we are still dealing with a global pandemic that seems to be relentless. How the hell are we supposed to lose weight, stop smoking, run more or do whatever big idea we are trying to add into our already crazy lives while we’re dealing with a global pandemic?
So I have decided that I just won’t be making any New Year’s resolutions this year. Instead, 2021 will be the year of intention for me because, in reality, it’s the intention with which you do things that counts – and not necessarily the things you do.
Choosing an intention is like creating a theme for the new year, and that theme becomes a guiding principle instead of a guilt-trip, you can click here to read more about intentions.
But I kicked off last year with 3 Life Hacks that really helped me cope with social media craziness and over-working so I thought I would share them here. They may make your 2021 so much easier (and offer some stress relief and self-care).
Blocked, muted and unfriended people that were no longer adding value to my well-being.
It’s called self-care, and it’s needed in a world filled with so much noise. People on the Internet can be horrid, but that doesn’t mean that you have to allow that kind of negativity into your life. Curating the timelines on your social media will change how you use social media and take you back to a time where you may actually enjoy checking in on your friends.
And most people would agree that engaging in a public fight is probably ruder than disengaging. Blocking someone on social media is pretty much that: politely declining to involve yourself in response to someone’s digital drivel. So if the alternative to blocking someone is taking part in immature, ill-advised or otherwise obnoxious social media communication? Best to block, and leave the rest of your social media friends out of it.
Get rid of the negativity, and if you’re not ready to take the plunge to unfriend then just mute, they will never know, and you will feel 100 times better. Promise.
Took emails off my phone.
What the efff? Yup, you don’t need to be connected to your work with an invisible umbilical cord. I remembered a time before Blackberry took hold of us and made us believe we needed to be on email 24 hours a day.
We are all guilty of having our work emails on our phones; it might seem harmless – answering the odd email while chatting to a friend, cooking dinner, or even on the weekend. But being constantly logged on and readily available to dive into your work inbox is actually affecting your everyday life and not in a positive way.
And while working from home in 2020, it felt like we were constantly connected, which is just not healthy. So not today Satan or 2021, or ever again!
I treat email like the post. I’ll get to it when I have time and if it’s imperative and urgent… you can call me. It’s funny because clients would call me to ask if I got their email and my reply about not having email on my phone would generally make them rethink why they are so email dependent.
Moved all my meetings to Thursday and Friday so I could actually work for most of the week.
How crazy right? And it might not work for everyone, but I get the MOST done when I can switch off and write, so that’s what I did. For 3 days a week, I am tied to my keyboard and just write… and it’s one of the BEST things I have ever done. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is work time, and the rest of the week can be spent planning and plotting and catching up. I have never been more productive.
And perhaps you are not able to give up 3 days a week to just work but one tweak to your weekly schedule – like putting one day aside to focus on work – could make the difference between confidently accomplishing your strategic objectives and scrambling to keep up with the day-to-day.
So here’s to 2021, to good things, to happiness, to more self-care, loving louder and kindness!
by 