Letters for Creatives #15: Set intention with your time
Letters for Creatives #15: Set intention with your time
Plus: The social dilemma and social media
Hello, I am Celeste. Each week I write about marketing, creativity and writing. The interviews with a writer for Interview with an artist series can be found here and here.
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Talking about social media and the documentary The Social Dilemma is a trend lately. If you are want to live with intention, it is important not to let social media control how you spend your time. You can flip it by setting rules and use certain tools to help you be more intentional.
You can now get back your time to work on your most important tasks, avoid burnout and get the creative juice going with the following tips.
Set intention with your time
Hustle culture has been around for quite a while. This video by Jade is a thought-provoking as it questions how we can balance between hustling and connecting with loved ones in real life. Both are important.
The former helps us to work towards financial freedom. The later helps us to stay connected and have stable mental health and physical health (if you work out with your friends).
I found this video very helpful as Beatrice provide tips to manage your time and not waste your time when you are waiting for something. Most people spend 38 to 50 hours every year waiting for traffic.
Khe Hy wrote an article about the perfect day for a person who tackles creative problems on a regular basis. It is always better to work according to your energy.
You usually have more energy and mental space to create art or strategies in the mornings. Hy uses his mornings to get creative and uses his afternoon for meetings and research. His evenings are for email and social media.
The Social Dilemma
If you make content on social media, you cannot avoid social media in your life. As a lot of people was talking about The Social Dilemma, I have been more conscious of how I use social media.
Am I consuming it for hours and the whole day flew by? Or am I using it to create original content or learn the things I want to learn?
Set a time limit when you want to scroll through social media and consume content. The endless scroll would not remind you to stop scrolling. You need to be conscious of your time on it if you want to be intentional with your time.
Add or reduce friction
James Clear wrote this incredible article about adding or reducing friction for the behaviours that you want to do less or more.
Putting things back to its place after you finish using them helps you save time. For instance, you would put the TV remote back on the TV stand after you finish watching TV. It saves you a lot of time from finding the remote or anything the next time you need them.
To integrate a new habit in your routine, you can start to reduce the friction of doing it by putting related items within your reach. You can put your journal on your table if you want to write every morning. Or you can have the writing software or website the first thing you see when you use your laptop.
There are a lot of ways to add or reduce friction in life. Reducing friction helps you to work on your creative project much easier. Adding friction helps you to remove bad habits such as binge-watching shows (I do that occasionally) or consume social media for the whole day.
Turn off notifications
Turning off notifications, mute your phone and turn on Do Not Disturb is going to let you have much less anxiety. You can focus much better and get more done every day. You can always check your phone when you want to, with the intention not to be controlled by social media.
A useful tool to remove YouTube distraction
I found this tool to help you remove all the videos from your YouTube home page. You can change your settings to choose what to hide on YouTube, such as the sidebar, recommended videos and end screen video wall (in which YouTubers suggest you more of their videos).
A tool to help you rank on Instagram hashtags
Flick is a useful tool if you want to find which hashtag your posts are ranking in the top 9. It helps you find new hashtags and manage your hashtags. It became much easier for you to rank on a hashtag and let more people find your Instagram. (affiliate link that does not cost you anything but gives me a small commission)
A tool to save your time growing Instagram
I found Dollar Eighty that helps me save a lot of time liking and commenting. It helps you find new accounts to interact with and grow your Instagram account. It is your choice if you like and comment on 90 posts or less every day. I find it very useful and have been using it every day. (affiliate link that does not cost you anything but gives me a small commission)
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