We see you over there. Responding to emails at the dinner table. Skipping breakfast, then lunch while you reply to social media comments. Filming every significant second of your life because: Stories. Listening to business podcasts, watching YouTube tutorials, and reading management ebooks while you drive, do dishes, fold laundry, workout at the gym, pick your kids up from school and “vacation.” Your employees text you at all hours of the day and night. You’re always on. Always plugged in. A notification is always pinging and buzzing and ringing from your glowing pocket brick.
You’ve become, in essence, a 24/7 tech monster. Available to all things digital. Absent from reality.
Add in this past year of constant bad news and world-altering events and the well-intended Screen Time app settings have all but given up on you.
You’re in desperate need of a break, but you feel like a full-on unplugging is impossible.
We’re here to help. Yes, you can take a break. Yes, you can unplug. But not without some planning.
Analysis
Before you can cut yourself off from tech, you have to analyze how it’s being used. Are you actually doing work that is benefitting your business, or are you just in a habit of filling your every waking hour with screen-based work?
If you haven’t been using Screen Time or some other activity monitoring tool on your phone, it’s time. It’s time to get really clear on how you are utilizing this little device and be honest with yourself about if it’s providing effective results.
Does anyone really need to spend more than an hour… two tops on social media? Where is the line between impactful work and mindless scrolling? Start taking notice of how you’re using the technology and how that effort contributes to your bottom line.
Tapering
In all likelihood, you’ve found some areas in your tech usage that could be dialed back. Before you take a full-on tech break, just start out by tapering back. Set a timer for how long you’re allowed to be on Instagram or trade out constant email back and forth for a poignant 15-minute phone call.
Technology has a way of tricking us into thinking that its “conveniences” are the easiest, fastest way to get things done. Sometimes, it is the opposite of effective, breading laziness and dragging out an experience rather than introducing efficiency.
Try to migrate some of your technology-centered tasks offline. Read a physical book. Take a mentor out for coffee instead of listening to a podcast. Sit in pure, unadulterated silence and allow your thoughts to stew rather than immediately Googling a question the second it occurs to you.
Like anything, going from all to nothing rarely works. Quitting tech cold turkey is likely going to cause anxiety rather than alleviate it.
Planning
When you’ve decided how and when you’d like to take a break, it is going to involve some planning and some frontloaded effort to make it work. You may even feel like you’re doing more work than before just get yourself a break.
But proper planning will help you be more successful. Take a few steps to prepare for your tech-free time.
- Tell the people it impacts. Your employees, your family, your friends, your followers, your customers. Be upfront about what you intend to do and why. We could ALL use the time away from our phones, so hopefully, you aren’t met with huge resistance and they are all able to prepare as well.
- Automate what you can. Set up email automation for customer service, sales, lead generation, and regular communication. Tech break or not, every small business owner should be seeking to translate as much as they can to an automated system.
- Schedule it out. Social media posts. Meetings. Campaigns. Most businesses have a slow season. Identify yours and schedule your break for then. The odds are you can’t disappear 100% of your responsibilities, but they can be bumped up, put off, or scheduled to accommodate your needs.
- Hire trusted personnel. If you have a team of employees, a contractor, or a virtual assistant, make sure you are in a place where you feel confident in your skills. If your break depends on someone else stepping up, that someone needs to be up to the task. A last-minute hire could end up being more work than help, so if you intend to leave someone else in charge that should be a well-established staff member.
- Create boundaries. You need this for yourself and the people around you. If there’s no way to completely unplug, decide where your limits are. Give yourself two hours in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Or make it abundantly clear to staff that all work communication ceases at a certain time. Today’s working world is begging for boundaries to be established, and as a small business owner, it’s up to you to set the tone for your brand.
Patience
You may not get it right the first time you try. You may itch at the idea of leaving your phone in another room or keeping the laptop at home when you’re going out of town. Have patience with the process. Expect to be uncomfortable. Expect to be a little grossed out by how much you feel like you need to tech to function. Expect to have a hard time filling quiet moments where you’d usually whip out your phone.
You and just about everyone else living in the 21st century knows how instilled these devices have become in modern-day life. They are designed to psychologically demand your attention. They have the same power of drugs, alcohol, and casinos packed into one little handheld “helper.” It’s going to be hard to let it go. Whether you’ve decided you need one full day a week with 0 screens or you’re taking a one-month sabbatical from technology, there are going to be aspects of this that feel unnatural or out of sync with your usual flow.
Do it anyway.