As a small business, we love using technology media to reach our guests and future clients. Social media, email, online booking, and (of course) blogging are all ways we promote the services we provide and meet your needs!
But as we are all learning and witnessing, technology can have its downsides.
So with that, we want to share some of our recent strategies for using technology (or not using technology) to maintain a healthy relationship and outlook on the world.
Pick up with Purpose
Picking up a phone is now a compulsive act that goes unnoticed. This can change with a little mindfulness. Try setting your phone away and when you pick it up next, stop and ask, “What task am I going to complete with my phone?” Often, grabbing the phone has no task associated with it and then you’ll find yourself scrolling indefinitely.
Minimize (or Stop) Social Media Scrolling
Once you become aware of how often and how much time you spend scrolling your Facebook feed, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (and whatever else is out there) it’s shocking! We recently moved those apps on our phone to a tough-to-get-to file and were amazed at what a difference it made to our habits. Especially in this climate, online chatter can get toxic fast so creating an obstacle has really helped. If you do visit your social media feed, be intentional by checking your favorite accounts/people specifically (like us!) instead of letting the algorithm control what you are exposed to.
Turn off Notifications
Unless it’s a phone call from your elderly mother or kid at school or any other real-life human being, there’s really nothing so urgent that necessitates interrupting your day and distracting you from the task at hand!
Subscribe and Pay For News
This is probably the single BEST decision we’ve made in the last year. With misinformation plaguing our country (and online algorithms feeding just a sliver of news from possibly untrustworthy sources), we decided to pay for online subscriptions to reputable, trustworthy, vetted, REAL news outlets that are committed to ethical journalism. Choose multiple news outlets that provide a fair mix of [perceived] left/right, local/national/global, profit/non-profit. It really makes a world of difference to witness a consensus reached by a variety of journalists.