We jumped the gun this year and made our New Years resolution back in early December. We’ve been working at it for the past several weeks and you know what? It’s already been a game changer for us. This was our problem and I’m betting you can relate: We look at our phones way too much!
We resolved to cut back on screen time and tame the beast. This is what we’ve learned so far…
1. There is rarely if ever an email that is so urgent, that I need to respond to it within minutes. I was in the habit of checking my emails 20+ times a day (first thing in the morning, between farm tasks, or unfortunately, sometimes during farm tasks), and social media at least that many times. I mean, how many critically time-sensitive messages do I really get that would make this behavior sensible? None.
2. We are now blocking time in our schedules for email and social media and we are WAY more productive! Since I’m a pretty calendar driven kind-of-guy, I set my schedule in the beginning of the week (we LOVE google calendar) and block almost every hour of the work day with farm tasks. Instead of checking my email randomly multiple times a day, I am making a point to do this during my designated email time. This small change is taking some time to get used to but it has been awesome!
3. Keeping our phones out of our bedroom improved our quality of sleep.
For most of our adult lives, we’ve charged our phones on our bedside tables and used them as alarm clocks. But having them right next to us all night meant that we got into the bad habit of looking at our phones right before bed and right when we woke up. Well, it turns out this behavior does not help our circadian rhythm! We bought an alarm clock (this one which also has sound and light therapy!) and we are now sticklers about keeping the phones out of our bedroom. It took a few days to make the adjustment, but we are getting much more restful sleep!
4. There are apps out there to help us. We’ve been using an app called Moment which tracks the minutes/hrs of screen time and helps us set goals and track our screen time. Changing the notification settings on the email and social media apps so that we’re not alerted when messages come in has been a good improvement too.
We have HUGE goals for our farm and our lives for 2019, so we know that these changes will be sooo worth it.
Your Farmers,
Greg and Jenney