In Ireland, June heralds the start of holiday season as schools close and the weather improves (we hope), we think about taking a break from work and catching up on all those things we have been meaning to get to.
If you are hoping to create a reset for yourself this summer, you might take some inspiration from the thoughts and advice below.
Time is precious and we all want to do what’s best for us with whatever minutes we have…
Enjoy!
Sinead
Perhaps June has snuck up on you because you have been busy.
Maybe you have 20+ unread emails everyday or things on a to-do list that get carried over to the next week, every week! It would be a nice feeling to have cleared the decks before you take annual leave.
I liked this advice (which I paraphrase) from Page Grossman.
1. You don’t have to read all the emails you are subscribed to every time you receive them. In fact, Page set up an email filter rule so that the 5 morning news updates she receives every day go into a separate folder. I did this at the start of June. I haven’t read any of those news updates yet, but my inbox looked less demanding every morning. I’ve been fine without that news, although I know where to find it if necessary.
2. Unsubscribe from messages that you only read less than 50% of the time, you don’t need them. Unsubscribe from my email newsletter if you like. I won’t be offended, if the newsletter doesn’t resonate with you anymore, you don’t need it.
3. Drop some items from your to-do list. If they are not urgent and not important, maybe you never need to do them. If you have proactively added items to your list thinking they “should” be done by you but they don’t really motivate you, drop them. Maybe someone else would enjoy them and unless someone comes and specifically asks you to do them, leave them off your list and don’t feel guilty.
I read one more piece of advice today that I liked (it was in an article in the Irish Examiner called “Workplace Wellbeing: Break free from work emails and calls” by Sharon Ní Chonchúir). This is the link.
4. The tip is shared by clinical psychologist Dr. Vincent McDarby. It is also referenced in a 2014 TIME magazine article which advises that the German car manufacturer Daimler have a policy that emails received whilst you are on holiday are automatically deleted. The sender gets a message advising to get in touch again when you are back or contact another staff member, so no unread emails waiting for you when you return. You could implement this yourself by setting an autoreply which advises emails received while you are on leave will be deleted, asking the sender to get in touch again. Then you would need to resist the temptation to check emails while on holiday and be disciplined enough to delete when you return to work. I must admit I haven’t done this myself but it’s an interesting idea in the age of email overload!
In line with the theme of making the most of our time and living our best lives. I liked this analogy from Steven Bartlett’s “The Diary of a CEO: The 33 laws of business and life”.
Steven likens life to a game of roulette where every chip we place represents an hour of our time. Of course, we have a limited number of chips as life is finite. Although, we actually don’t know how many chips we have.
We place a chip on the roulette wheel every hour and we never get that chip back. However, we have control over where we place the chips so we can influence our health, relationships, work etc. by where we place our limited chips.
Steven recommends placing the chips consciously and on things that bring us joy.
“You’ll probably surprise yourself with what you can accomplish- if you are focused one thing. You’ll probably frustrate yourself with what you fail to accomplish-if you’re doing 5 or 7 or 12 things. Nobody performs well if stretched in a half dozen directions.” James Clear
“You don’t have to answer every email…, you don’t have to keep up with group texts,…you don’t have to engage with social media groups that you’re part of, …you don’t have to do Wordle just because you have a streak.” Page Grossman
“Time is both free and priceless. The person you are now is a consequence of how you used your time in the past. The person you’ll become in the future is a consequence of how you use your time in the present. Spend your time wisely, gamble it intrinsically and save it diligently.” Steven Bartlett
Sinead Huskisson 