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Ruqaiya's avatar

Loving these tips Marcia! I am an avid disciple of the Cal Newport school on digital minimalism... Post covid I suffered from crippling anxiety ,80% of it was induced by keeping tabs on teams, calendar ,two inboxes ,newsletters, social media DMs etc.

I took the time to set hard and fast rules ...

1. I do NOT check my phone /messages/WhatApp/ emails before 8:00 a.m. I have a rigorous (borderline maniacal) shut down ritual and although it was initially HARD for people to get on board with it, they've just realised that it is what it is.

2. No WhatApp on phone ... I use web-based WhatApp and most recently i started using instagram from my laptop instead of my phone.

3. I've turned off ALL notifications on my phone -email,WhatApp, grocery stores etc... Only notifications I receive are time sensitive notifications i.e. your Deliveroo driver is on his way (lol)

4. For photos i've disabled the options of automatically downloading media content into my gallery ..it's amazing how much crap people send and when it automatically syncs on to your gallery it's overwhelming. Also all WhatsApp Groups are on mute forever ... when I want to check I will set aside time in a day to check it.

I get easily addicted to anything ...food, sugar, social media ,online shopping etc.. so Digital minimalism was the only way to go.....

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