As business owners, we carry around a walking distraction machine in our pockets ?
Normally it is social media disrupting work, but when we are trying to take “time off” it can be the other way around with work disrupting our downtime.
Notifications dinging and dragging us back into work mode means we never truly relax, you end up with the worst of both worlds ?
Stuck in limbo, not quite working, but not quite relaxing either, so what can be done?
How To Stop Social Media Ruining Your Christmas
We have come up with three ways for business owners to stop social media ruining your Christmas by getting the time off you need to be effective once the holiday is over.
1️⃣ Schedule and forget your holiday social media
We recommend using apps like Sendible to schedule your social media over the holiday period to remove the temptation to log in and start posting.
Removing the guilt of not doing enough is powerful and scheduling tools should give you the power to resist the temptation and relax knowing that everything is taken care of.
You can use autoresponders on Facebook so that if people message you they get an automatic response (like an email out of office) telling them when you will respond and how they can contact you if it is a genuine emergency.
2️⃣ Turn off notifications and deleting apps
When you get a notification from your phone the body releases the same types of chemicals that create the highs in illegal drugs. We are addicted to our phones dinging and giving us that warm fuzzy feeling. Without thinking we open up our phones excited to see who has liked, commented or shared our content.
This makes it impossible to fully switch off.
We recommend turning off all notifications for your common social media apps, you could always take the nuclear option and temporarily deleting the apps entirely so you cannot absent-mindedly check your social media channels.
3️⃣ Commit to ignoring your business social media
The final tip we have is to commit to taking time off over Christmas. This will help you have the willpower to resist checking your pages and ignoring a stray notification if it gets through.
Are you willing to make that commitment?