Today’s Task

How are you getting on with your January Jump?

Are you tackling the daily Jump tasks energetically like a career ninja?  Are you mostly on track but have a little catching up to do?  Or perhaps you’re saving our emails to work through later, as time permits?   Whichever way you are approaching the Jump, you should feel good that you are onboard and taking positive steps to help your career in 2018.

We will send out a survey at the end of the Jump – to ask for your feedback and ideas to help us make any future Jump even better.   In the meantime, please do give us a thumbs up by adding a few words in the ‘Leave A Reply’ section below, or leave us a Facebook rating/review if you are enjoying the Jump.  We would love to hear from you!

Catch Up Day AND Social Media Detox

Today we’re going for the double: it’s both a catch up day and a social media detox.

Part 1 – Catch Up Day

We know it has been a busy schedule over the past two weeks and it’s quite likely that there are things you have skipped over or that you need to spend a little more time on (such as yesterday’s CV Sort Out or following up on your meetings).   So, today we’re going to give you a little breathing space to catch up on a missed task, or to complete an unfinished one.

If however you are fully up to date with all the tasks, then congratulations and a huge WELL DONE!  Today is a day for you to put your feet up.  Enjoy your 30 minutes of completely free time!!!  Tell your partner/kids/boss/flatmates that this is an official “Jump-sanctioned” half an hour of YOU-time and that you are not to be interrupted.

Part 2 – Social Media Detox

The second part of today’s task is to switch off your social media for the rest of the day.

Why? As I mentioned in our very first Jump task,  social media can be a time drain for most people (including me).  Cutting down on time spent on social media is one of the easiest ways to create more productive time in the day.

You may not enjoy the thought of going “cold turkey” from social media, but most people find this exercise a bit of an eye-opener, as they realise how much time they actually waste on social media browsing.

Alternatively, if you use social media as part of your job – or if you cannot imagine surviving the next 17 or so hours without Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn/Snapchat etc – then schedule one hour (60 minutes!) this morning and one hour this evening to check your alerts and respond to anything important.  Set the timer on your phone and switch off/close all social media once the hour is up.  Close your apps and switch off all notifications. Please be really strict with yourself.  It is only for one day!

Benefits of a Social Media Detox

With the extra free time that you reclaim today, I recommend that you do something enjoyable: read a book, talk to a friend, go for a walk, take long bath, or listen to some music. Leave the TV off tonight, put your phone on flight mode, and enjoy this little bubble of space and freedom.

Some people describe the experience (once they get over the shock of detaching from their devices) like having a mini “staycation” (i.e. a vacation where you stay at home).

While there are many good things about social media, a little detox occasionally is good for your mental health and it frees up time for you to spend on other, often more tangible and enjoyable, things.  So please do give it a try today!

More Social Media Timesavers

Here are four more ways to regain control of your social media and browsing time:

1.  Do A Regular Detox

If you feel you gain some benefit from your Jump social media detox, you might choose to do a regular detox one day each week, everyday weekday after 7pm, or one day per month.  It’s entirely up to you.

2. RescueTime App

A free app, called RescueTime (which I’ve mentioned previously here and here), can help you track how much time you are spending on social media.  Users report that they are spending much more time browsing than they had realised – up to two hours per day!  If you can reclaim this lost time – and remember this is time you may not even consciously realise you are spending on browsing – you could potentially create one extra productive working day in every week!

3. Schedule Your Social Media Time

Instead of doing regular detoxes, an alternative approach is to proactively schedule your social media time.  Some of the most successful people I work with allocate just two dedicated slots in their day to using social media.  One slot tends to be first thing in the morning, before the working day really begins, and the second is towards the end of the working day.

A similar “twice a day” strategy is very effective for managing your emails.

4. Turn off Notifications

Notifications distract us: they interrupt us when we are concentrating, and they demand our immediate attention.  Research consistently shows that people work most effectively when they concentrate on completing one task at a time.  And yet we set ourselves up to do the opposite when our Facebook “ping” or WhatsApp “buzz” is going off every few minutes (or seconds!).

The simplest way to avoid these interruptions is to turn off your ‘real time’ notifications.  Don’t panic! Your social media apps, and those all-important notifications, will still be available to you when you go online.  But by turning off any sound, text and email alerts, you are much less likely to be distracted mid-task.

You are almost on the home straight with just three more tasks to do in the Jump!  Keep going – there will be a treat at the end!!

Find out more about the January Jump, and see previous tasks, on the January Jump homepage.