» Do spend your time creating, working on important projects, getting outside, communicating with people in person, collaborating, exercising.
» Do read: books, long-form articles or essays you?ve been wanting to read but haven?t had the time for.
» Do watch informative or thought-provoking films, but not mindless popular movies.
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You could make a personalized list of your dos and don?ts, but you get the general idea. Again, start with half a day or a day ? something manageable.
Do it once a week, and gradually expand the time you spend on the cleanse.
Reducing the Stream
If you?ve done the cleanse, you now know the value of disconnecting, and you know that you can live without having to check your streams of information and messages all day, every day.
You?ve cleaned your plate. Now it?s time to figure out what to add back on it.
Give it some thought: what are the most essential ways you communicate?
Email? Skype? Twitter? Cell phone? IM?
What are the most essential information streams you consume? What blogs? What news? What other reading or watching or listening?
What can you cut out? Can you cut half of the things you read and watch?
More?
Try eliminating at least one thing each day: a blog you read, an email newsletter you receive, a communication channel you don?t need anymore, a news site you check often. Take them out of your email or feed inbox, or block them using one of the blocking tools mentioned in the ?Focus Tools?
chapter.
Slowly reduce your stream, leaving only the essentials.
Using the Stream Wisely
Just as importantly, reduce the time you spend using the essentials. If email is essential, do you need to be notified of every new email right this second? Do you need to be in your inbox all day long?
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Place limits on the time you spend reading and communicating ? a small limit for each channel. Only check email for 30 minutes, twice a day, for example (or whatever limits work for you). Only read the limited number of blogs you subscribe to for 30 minutes a day. Only watch an hour of TV a day (for example).
Write these limits down, and add them up for a grand total of what you plan to spend on reading, consuming, communicating. Is this an ideal amount, given the amount of time you have available to you each day? The smaller the overall limit, the better.
_______________
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2: you don?t need to respond
?Nature does not hurry, yet everything is
accomplished.?
? Lao Tzu
We have developed a fairly urgent need to respond to many things: emails, Tweets & other social network status updates, instant messages, phone calls, text messages, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, and more. This need to respond gives us anxiety until we?ve responded, but unfortunately, there is a never-ending stream of things that require your response.
If we allow these messages to force us to respond, almost as soon as they come, then we become driven by the need to respond. Our day becomes responsive rather than driven by conscious choices. We flit from one task to another, one response to another, living a life driven by the needs of others, instead of what we need, what we feel is important.
You don?t need to respond.
Think about why we feel we need to respond to everything. Often it?s just a compulsion ? we?re so used to answering messages that we have developed an urge to respond. Often it?s also out of fear: fear that people won?t think we?re doing our job, fear that we?ll lose customers, fear that we?ll miss out on something important, fear that people will think we?re rude or ignoring them.
But what if we weaned ourselves from this compulsion? And what if we addressed these fears?
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