Live Your Best Life in 6 Steps

Live Your Best Life in 6 Steps

Everyone is different. It’s not reasonable to expect that everyone wants to live the same life. But, to step outside the options that society deems to be acceptable can be a little scary. Our need to impress and be accepted can be very strong.

Perhaps you’ve never really considered what your dream life would be. It’s hard to hit a target that you’ve never identified.

Follow these steps to imagine the best life you could possibly have and then live it:

1. Be true to yourself. You can’t live your best life if you’re pretending to be someone or something that you’re not. The first step in living your best life is to admit to yourself who you really are. Be honest about your likes, dislikes, and dreams.
   • Maybe you would like to live in a cabin in the woods and grow all of your food.
   • Or do you love the idea of minimalism and frugality?
   • Do you prefer animals to people?
   • Would you like to live in a commune?
   • Do you love to play the accordion?
   • Would you like to travel the world like a nomad without a home base?
   • Do you want to spend all of your time and resources saving the planet?
   • Does the idea of having children horrify you? Or would you like to try for 13 kids?
   • Choose what appeals to you. Any admiration or scorn you receive from others won’t last long enough for your cup of coffee to get cold.
2. Make a plan. Relying on chance or luck is a losing game in the long run. If you want a specific life, it’s important to choose it and then make a plan to get there. Make a long-term plan that begins with something you can do today.
3. Execute your plan. Many people love to dream and plan. That’s the easy and fun part. Unfortunately, few people ever take the first step in their plan. They never get started.
   • Take some sort of action each day outlined by your plan. You don’t have to do an amazing amount of work each day to make significant progress over time. A little each day eventually grows into substantial results.
   • The hardest part is getting started, so ensure that you get started as soon as possible. There will never be a perfect time to begin. Begin now and make the best of it. Everything changes once you actually begin.
4. Learn from your mistakes. Neither you nor your plan is flawless. You will make mistakes and try things that don’t work. That should be expected. Decide that you’re going to learn from your mistakes, adjust your approach, and try again.
5. Focus. Keep your attention on those things that are relevant regarding your plans. Reject nearly everything else.
   • Why are you gossiping about your coworkers or neighbors?
   • Still upset about how your ex cheated on you 13 years ago?
   • Annoyed by the price of gasoline?
   • What do any of these sorts of things have to do with achieving your goals and attaining your dream life? (Nothing.)
6. Finish. You can’t live your best life if you give up on your quest to attain it. Keep going until you’ve arrived where you want to be.

Your best life is out there ready for you to claim it! Be completely honest with yourself, make a plan, and stick with it until you’ve arrived. The life you desire is attainable and within your reach. Do you have the courage to make it happen?

Take a chance on feeling happy and fulfilled. Chase after your dream life.

Do Your Goals Support Your Values

Do Your Goals Support Your Values?

If you’re struggling to be as successful as you’d like to be, there’s a great chance that a discrepancy exists between your goals and your values. If our goals are antithetical to our values, success is all but impossible. We don’t like to behave in ways that are counter to our values. If a mismatch exists, something has to give.

If you’re forever coming up short when it comes to achieving your dreams, your values might be at odds with your goals.

Use these techniques to set goals that support your values:

1. List your current values. Have you ever taken the time to examine your values? Most people have never given their values a second thought. This is a shame, because a person’s values guide their thinking, decisions, and actions.
   • Take 30 minutes and list your values. Put them in order of their priority to you.
   • Ask yourself if your behavior is aligned with your values. If there’s a mismatch, what set of values would actually represent your behavior?
   • Most of us have an idealized impression of our intentions, values, and qualities.
     
2. What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals in life? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to be wealthy? Get a six-pack? Write a screenplay? Save the whales? Build a real estate empire? The first step to any great success is to identify your objectives.
3. How do your current values impact your goals? If your values and goals don’t match, the odds of success are dismal without something changing.
   • For example, if you believe that wealthy people are fundamentally bad, you’ll never accumulate a significant amount of wealth.
   • If comfort is a high priority for you, that six-pack will never materialize.
   • Do you value having a lot of leisure time? A goal that requires a lot of work isn’t going to happen.
   • Look at your goals and look at your values. Do your goals support those values? Do your values support your goals?
4. What would be the perfect set of values to support your goals? Imagine you could build a person from scratch that would be perfect for accomplishing your goals. What values and qualities would they possess? How would you be different if you had these values?
   • Think about the people you know that have accomplished what you want to accomplish. How would you describe them?
5. How close can you come to matching those values? How well can you rearrange your values to match that ideal set of values? The closer you’re able to come, the greater the odds of your success.
6. Reinforce the values that matter. Imagine that your goal is to save $20,000 for a down payment on a home. Let’s suppose that you’ve determined that you need to be someone that values saving money over spending. How can you build this value in yourself and make it a part of you?
   • Prove to yourself that you’re that type of person: For example, pick up pennies you find on the ground and save them. Cut coupons. Find new ways of dealing with stress other than shopping. Save part of your income as soon as your paycheck hits your bank account.
   • When you keep proving to yourself over and over again that you possess a value, those actions will build and reinforce that value.

Are your goals and values a good match? It’s important that they are. When a mismatch exists, it’s important to either alter your values or your goals. There’s only so much resistance a person can overcome. Success is much easier when your values and your intentions are highly compatible.

Why Youre Unable To Just Sit Down And Do Your Work

Why You’re Unable to Just Sit Down and Do Your Work

Have you ever had important things to do, but you just couldn’t make yourself do them? Sometimes it’s simple procrastination, but that’s not the only explanation that applies when you’re resisting your work. There can be a variety of things that are preventing you from taking the action you know you should take

Let’s get to the bottom of it.

Are one of these reasons keeping you from getting your work done?

1. Your goals aren’t inspiring you. If you can’t get yourself to write for your blog, start your online business, or begin on a big project at home, perhaps your goals aren’t the right goals for you.
   • When you have inspiring goals, motivation is much easier to generate.
2. You’re not clear on what you want to accomplish. It’s hard to get busy when you only have a vague idea of what you need to do. Be crystal clear on your intention. We all know we have things to do, but are you certain of what exactly needs to be done?
   • Our brains don’t like confusion or ambiguity. We reject uncertainty, so clarify your task until you’re certain of what you need to do.
3. Fear of failure. Fear of failure is one of the greatest and most common obstacles to getting work done. If you look ahead and see failure in your future, it’s very challenging to sit down and get busy.
   • Consider, instead, what will happen if you succeed! Focus on this outcome.
4. Your ability to focus is weak. We have too many distractions in our lives these days. Our lives are overly complicated. Our ability to focus has atrophied.
   • Practice focusing for short periods of time and your ability to focus will improve quite quickly.
5. Too many distractions. Get rid of as many of the distractions in your life as possible. What is a distraction? Anything you find yourself doing instead of what you should be doing.
6. Your life is too complicated. Maybe you have too much going on in your life, and you simply lack the physical and emotional energy to do your work. Minimize your life and keep the essentials.
7. You’re not getting enough sleep. Brains don’t function optimally unless they get enough sleep. You won’t feel like doing challenging things if you’re tired. Experiment with your sleep routine until you find a routine that works for you. Go to bed earlier if you need to.
8. Your work environment isn’t supportive. The ideal work environment is well lit, a comfortable temperature, private, quiet, and has a pleasant view.
   • It’s not easy to work if you’re in a hot room with poor lighting and sharing cramped quarters with the washer, dryer, and a pile of dirty clothes. Great work is easier to do in a great location.
9. You don’t love what you do. Getting a lot of work done is especially difficult if you don’t like what you’re doing. For example, you might love the idea of making a ton of money, but if you hate sales, it will always be extremely challenging to get yourself to make sales calls every day.

Many people think a lack of success is from a lack of information. In reality, most of us know what we need to do to make our lives much better, but we just can’t get ourselves to do it.

Create the best possible environment for your work. Do work that you love to do. Give up your fear of failure. And learn how to focus.

A simple life with a clear focus is a great recipe for getting your work done and making real progress.

Why Your Fear of Success is Holding You Back

Why Your Fear of Success is Holding You Back

Fear of success? Fear of failure is something we can all understand, but fear of success? It might sound a little funny, but many people fear success even if they don’t realize it.

Success isn’t 100% positive, and there’s a part of you that understands that. Success brings attention, requests for help, and maybe even disappointment. It wouldn’t be much fun to achieve your biggest goals and still feel unfulfilled.

Success makes your life easier in some ways and more challenging in others. Every situation has its advantages and disadvantages.

You might be suffering from a fear of success if you regularly sabotage yourself or have difficulty pursuing your dreams.

See how the fear of success can stop your progress in its tracks:

1. Success requires you to be more than you’ve been demonstrating. Our brains crave comfort. Comfort equals survival, which is your brain’s primary objective.
   • Changing your life requires changing your behavior, mindset, and perhaps even your beliefs and values. Thinking about that can create discomfort.
2. Success brings social pressure. Success isn’t just a big bank account and glory. People look at you differently when you’re successful. In fact, many people that ignored you before will start paying attention.
   • If you are making a lot of money, people will start asking you for financial help. Charities will start contacting you.
   • Driving an expensive car or living in a big home draws attention, too.
3. Success is new territory for you, and you fear the unknown. You know what your current situation is like. You might not enjoy your current situation, but you know what to expect each day. Changing your life means dealing with new situations and new people. This can be unsettling to consider.
4. You’re afraid of what you might become. You might consider yourself to be a good person, but maybe you have some concerns about what you might do if you had more money and power.
   • We’ve all seen characters in movies and books that change for the worse after achieving success. Or, you might personally know someone that underwent a negative transformation.
5. You’re concerned that success might not be as great as you imagine. Humans are genetically disposed to be discontent. Have you ever noticed that a lot of things aren’t as great as you anticipated? Whether it’s a trip, a hot fudge sundae, or a new gadget you just had to own, there’s often a bit of a letdown.
   • You might be sabotaging yourself by worrying that you’ll put in all that work only to be disappointed in the end.
6. Fear of criticism. Many people are suspicious and critical of successful people. Of course, much of this is often due to jealousy. Perhaps you’re concerned that you’ll be seen negatively by those around you.
   • This is more likely to happen if you view successful people in a negative light. You’ll naturally expect others to see you in the same way.
7. Fear that you’ll become someone you don’t like. While there is no reason that success would fundamentally change who you are, many people believe that success is toxic in some way. However, success can actually provide you with more opportunities to be your true self.

The fear of success might not be as obvious as the fear of failure, but it is a real challenge for many people.

If you’re not enthusiastically pursuing your goals, consider the reason. Are you afraid of success? Success isn’t perfect, but for most of us, it’s a better option than failing to achieve our potential!

Hard Reset to Make Big Changes

How to Do a Hard Reset to Make Big Changes in Your Life Quickly

There’s a lot to be said for making a series of small changes to your life and taking your time. It’s an effective way of changing your life with a minimal amount of stress. But, what if you’re impatient?

What if your life is such a mess that you’re willing to risk being uncomfortable to have a chance of changing your life quickly? In this case, there’s another option.

If you want to make big changes quickly, you can do a hard reset. Doing a hard reset on your cell phone erases everything and allows you to start over from scratch. You can do the same thing in your life if you’re tough enough.

A hard reset can be in just one part of your life or can encompass several aspects of your life.

Some examples of hard resets include:

• Changing careers
• Ending a relationship
• Moving to a new city
• Losing a dramatic amount of weight

Hard resets are big, serious, and require a lot of time and focus.

If you’re ready to make a big change quickly, follow this process of proven strategies:

1. Have a vision for what you want to accomplish. A big change requires a big and clear goal. What change do you want to make to your life?
   • Do you want to move to the beach?
   • Find someone that is a better match for you
   • Quit your job and go back to school?
   • Lose 75 pounds?
   • Run an ultramarathon?
2. Clear the junk out of your life. This includes possessions, people, and obligations that don’t add significantly to your life. People carry too much dead weight through life.
   • Big goals require sacrifices to be made. You might have to cut-off your high school friend, quit playing darts on Saturday nights, or throw your ukulele in the trash.
3. Decide on the most important actions to take. We like to be busy. It feels like we’re doing something. But we don’t necessarily like to do the most effective tasks, because they’re uncomfortable or inconvenient. That mentality isn’t an option if you’re doing a hard reset. You have to be tough on yourself.
   • Cutting off your food after dinner and taking a walk is a lot more effective than eating low-fat artificially sweetened brownies on the couch.
   • Approaching five interesting strangers each day is more effective than rewriting your personal ad profile for the 8th time.
   • Cold calling is more effective than tweaking your website that no one visits anyway.
   • Find the most effective actions and focus on those.
4. Schedule your time. You have 168 hours in the next week. If you sleep for 7 hours each night, that leaves 119 hours. If you’re working 40 hours a week, you still have another 79 hours left to use as well as you can. Even if you work 60 hours, that’s still a lot of time left over!
   • Make a plan for each day.
   • Each night, make an even better plan.
   • Execute your plan.
5. Realize the truth. If you’re spending all of your available time taking the most effective actions, how could you not be supremely successful at what you’re trying to accomplish?
   • Success isn’t a secret. It’s just that the obvious path to success looks miserable to most people.

The only issue you really have is yourself. With time, intention, and a little courage, it’s possible to make dramatic changes to your life very quickly.

A hard reset isn’t for everyone. Many people would have better luck making small changes over the course of several months.

On the other hand, some people are capable of moving faster and handling more pressure.

Which type of person are you? Go for it, in the way that works best for you. Either way, you’ll see success.

Billionaires Think Differently

6 Ways That Billionaires Think Differently Than the Rest of Us

Are billionaires unusual creatures that are born different from the rest of us? Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter.

What’s important is that billionaires have a different approach to the world that we can all learn from. People that have different results do things differently. And they do things differently because they think differently.

You might not be cut out to be a billionaire, but you can be much more financially successful than you’ve been demonstrating so far. Maybe all you need to do is to start thinking like a billionaire!

See how a billionaire thinks differently than most of us:

1. Billionaires have a long-term perspective. Most people are focused on surviving another week or planning their weekend. It’s a short-term perspective that never results in anything in the long-term.
   • A billionaire is making decisions and taking action for objectives that are often 10 years or more into the future.
   • A regular person might have to scramble to survive in the short-term, but there’s no reason why he can’t spend some of his time working toward something that will make his life better five years from now. However, very few do.
2. Billionaires value time over money. For a billionaire, money isn’t really a thing anymore. Buying a $200,000 car is irrelevant when you make $10 million a month. Billionaires value time. That’s why they often have drivers, charter planes, and assistants.
   • Conversely, many of us are willing to sacrifice too much time in order to save money. Sometimes this is necessary, but many people take it too far. As much as possible, use your time for a higher purpose.
3. Billionaires delegate. You can’t make a billion dollars all on your own. Many entrepreneurs struggle to grow beyond a certain level. It’s often because they won’t utilize other people to do the work.
   • It’s better to make 1% from the efforts of 1,000 people than to make 100% from just your own effort.
   • Delegate as much as you can. Always be looking for more valuable ways to spend your time.
4. Billionaires focus on making more money, rather than saving. The typical financial guru touts cutting expenses to the bone and saving as much as possible. That’s fine if you want to sacrifice today to be wealthy in 40 years when you retire.
   • However, it’s difficult to save a lot of money each month unless you make a lot of money.
   • Many billionaires are relatively tight with their money, but they primarily focus on making more money each year.
   • Save your money but put attention on boosting your income.
5. Billionaires have big goals. Billionaires aren’t aiming for a six-figure salary, a Corvette, or week in Rome. Their goals are more along the lines of taking over the telecommunications industry or owning a million acres of farmland. You can’t achieve big things without big goals.
6. Most billionaires like to work more than anything else. Some people look at billionaires and wonder what’s wrong with them.
   • “Don’t they already have more money than they can ever spend?”
   • “Why don’t they travel, spend time with friends, or learn to play the piano?”
   • “I could find something better to do than just work if I were wealthy.”
   • What most people fail to realize is that really successful people love to work. That’s part of the reason they are so successful.
   • A billionaire isn’t always obsessed with the idea of stockpiling more money – they just enjoy seeing improvement and progress in their life more than they enjoy doing anything else.

How does your way of thinking compare to that of a billionaire? Which of the ideas above can you incorporate into your own thinking?

You don’t have to be worth a billion dollars to think like a billionaire. And thinking like one can prove to be quite lucrative!

Reacting Versus Responding To Lifes Challenges

Reacting Versus Responding to Life’s Challenges

There are a lot of people that react to any kind of obstacle, setback, or challenge. Reactions are reflexive, ego-driven, and only consider the short-term outcome. Reactions make you feel better, but don’t resolve an issue effectively.

Responding is different. It’s intelligent, practical, and considers the long-term implications of that course of action.

People that react struggle and are known for making impulsive decisions. Those that respond have fewer struggles in life. As it turns out, the biggest hassles in life are usually of your own making.

Let’s consider an example that highlights the differences between reacting and responding:

Imagine that you have a horrible boss. Today at work, he berates you for something that isn’t your fault. He calls you a mean name. He says that you’re a worthless employee. You leave work enraged and convinced that you can’t take it anymore.

Reacting to this situation might entail quitting in a blaze of glory. You march in the next day and tell him exactly what you think of him. You might even spit in his eye, stomp on his foot, and shove your resignation letter into his mouth.

However, when you get home, you realize that the job market is tight, you have no savings, and no employment prospects.

Responding to this situation might look something like this:

You determine that you need to find another job. You work on your resume. You put out feelers to everyone you know that have or know of a position that’s suitable for you. You get in touch with a recruiter and let them know that you’re looking.

You also cut back on your expenses and save some money just in case you lose your job.

One of these options is short-sighted and risky. The other is thoughtful and logical. One is likely to end in misery, while the other is likely to end in success.

How can you strengthen your odds of success when challenges arise?

Following this process will help you to respond rather than react:

1. Steady yourself. It’s hard to be intelligent, logical, and practical when your emotions are high. Never make an important decision when you’re not cool, calm and collected. Take the time you need. Mull it over. Consider your options.
   
2. Identify the problem. What is the issue that you need to resolve? Think about what you want to change. Avoid changing a bunch of other things that may have a negative impact on your life. In the example above, you’d get away from your boss, but drastically change your income, too.
3. Be clear on the outcome you desire. It’s just as important to consider the outcome you desire. You might hate your job, but you don’t just want to get away from it. You’ll want a good landing place, too.
4. Make an intelligent plan. Create a plan that resolves your issue and gives you the outcome you desire. Reacting only removes the initial problem. It doesn’t provide a great outcome. A good plan does both.
5. Execute that plan. Use your plan. There are a lot of people that are great at making plans, but never execute them. You don’t want to be one of those people. Put your plan to the test and see what happens.

If you’re someone that reacts to the challenges in your life, you already know the additional challenges it can bring. It’s the perfect example of “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Avoid making decisions when you’re upset. Calm yourself first. Then make an intelligent decision that will remove that challenge from your life in a way that leaves you better than you started. Life is much easier this way.

Top 10 Ways to Learn More About Yourself

Top 10 Ways to Learn More About Yourself

You spend every minute with yourself, but you don’t know yourself as well as you think. You love to deceive yourself, whether you realize it or not. As they say, “You can’t handle the truth.”

Unfortunately, if you don’t know yourself, it’s hard to make progress. It’s like driving a car that doesn’t run well, but you refuse to look under the hood. There are issues under your hood that are in your way!

Try these techniques to get to know yourself better:

1. Take a personality test. There are plenty of tests available online. Some are better than others, so be sure to do some research. The more sophisticated and useful tests aren’t free, but you’re worth it!
2. List your values. What matters to you? What do you stand for? Make a list of your values and put them in order of which are most important to you. Do you live your life according to your values?
   • Imagine you’re an acquaintance of yours. How would you order your values based on your words and actions?
3. Whom do you admire? Who are the people you admire the most? Why do you admire them? What character traits and skills do you admire in others? What you admire in others says a lot about you.
4. Whom do you despise and why? Just as informative are the people you strongly dislike. Why do you dislike them? What exactly about them is it that you dislike? Do you see any of those traits in yourself?
5. Ask your friends and family for input. Your friends and family know more about you than you think. They definitely know a thing or two about you that you don’t know. Ask them for assistance in learning more about yourself. Be prepared to be surprised.
6. Imagine watching yourself. Imagine observing yourself for a day. Imagine watching yourself eat. Imagine seeing yourself in your typical clothing. Note how you interact with others.
   • You don’t appear to others the way you think you do. This is a chance to see what everyone else sees. If possible, consider setting up a video camera.
7. If you could be granted one wish, what would it be? Imagine being given a wish. What would you do with it? What can you infer from that?
   • Wishing for a billion dollars is different from wishing for world peace. Wishing for a loving spouse is different from wishing for the ability to fly or for a new sports car.
   • Your answer will tell you a lot about what’s most important to you.
8. What do you believe is the meaning of life? If you had to sum up the meaning of life in one sentence, what would it be? How did you come to that decision?
9. What is your biggest regret? What is the one thing you wish you could go back in time and do over? Why do you regret it so much? How would your life be different if you could redo a few decisions?
10. What makes you anxious? What causes you stress? What makes you worry? Why do these things upset you? What does your anxiety cost you? How does it limit you? How would your life change if you felt much less anxiety?

Knowing yourself is a great challenge. You’ve probably never seriously considered why you think and behave the way you do. We spend a lot of time contemplating people and situations outside of ourselves, but little time investigating ourselves.

If you knew yourself better, you could make a few adjustments and enjoy an easier and more successful life. You’d also be in a better position to deal with old emotional wounds.

Be courageous and take a long, hard look at yourself. Getting to know yourself is challenging, but in the long run, you’ll find that it’s worth the effort.

Wasting Time With Micro Timewasters

Wasting Time With Micro Timewasters

We notice how and when we waste time on a large scale. We notice that we spent an hour on social media or that we watched TV for three hours. However, these aren’t the only ways we waste time. We waste time in dozens of ways each day.

Many of this time wasters aren’t always obvious, but the time can really add up over the course of a day, a week, or a decade.

Don’t let your time just be frittered away! Imagine how much you could accomplish in that time! What could you do that really matters to you?

Guard your time from the micro timewasters with these strategies:

1. Have a phone charger with you. How many times in a week do you need a phone charger and have to go into the other room to fetch it? Have multiple chargers and keep them handy in the locations you spend the most time.
   • It’s not just the time it takes to get the charger. It’s the disruption to your thoughts and workflow. Plus, once you leave the room to locate your charger, who knows what else will grab your attention along the way.

1. Internet speed. How much time do you spend waiting for a web page to load? Or a movie to stream? You might not think you’re waiting for very long, but it all adds up. If your internet is noticeably slow, your time is being wasted.
2. Checking e-mail. It just takes 10 seconds to check email, right? Hardly. That quick look alters your concentration, and there’s no telling how far down the rabbit hole you’re going to go.
   • You might open three emails, respond to one one them, and then remember that you have another email to answer.
   • What if the email is a link to a video of a cat chasing a dog?
   • There’s no telling when you’ll get back on track.
3. Beverages. How many times do you get up from your desk to get a drink? However many times it is, it’s too many. Keep a beverage handy when you’re working. Take a sip and get back to work.
4. Snacks. Keep something healthy available. If you have to go to the vending machine for a snack, you can’t be sure who you’ll run into or how long you’ll be gone.
5. Get gas for your car on the weekend. You don’t want to be rushed on Tuesday morning and realize that your car needs gas on the way to work. Plan ahead.
6. Meals. We spend a lot of time thinking about meals, planning meals, buying food, cleaning dishes. If you have to stop on the way to work for breakfast, go out for lunch, and then pick up something at the store for dinner, you’re wasting a lot of time.
   • Go to the store once a week, at most.
   • Have food that can be prepared quickly and easily and doesn’t require multiple pots and pans to prepare it.
7. Looking for “lost” things. This could be your keys, purse, wallet, a pen, your shoes, jacket, umbrella, or anything else you’ve temporarily misplaced. Keep the essentials in a particular place.
   • For example, don’t ever put your car keys anywhere but in the decorative bowl by the front door. Your pen should be on your desk. Your shoes should be where your shoes belong if they’re not on your feet.

After you’ve eliminated the big wasters of time in your life, start looking at the tiny wasters of time. You’ll quickly realize that the impact on your life isn’t so tiny.

Every disruption has a greater impact than just the amount of time the disruption robs from you. Consider the loss of focus and momentum. It takes time to get back on track mentally after you’ve scoured the house or your workplace for a pencil.

Guard your time with your life – the life you really desire!

Who Else Wants to Try a Social Media Detox

Who Else Wants to Try a Social Media Detox?

Social media is great for staying in touch with family and friends and finding deals from your favorite brands. However, there can be a downside.

Internet searches for social media detox rose 314% this past year. That’s according to a Pinterest study of trends for the year 2020.

Maybe you’re one of many adults trying to change your relationship with Facebook and other online platforms. Start with these suggestions that will help you to clarify your priorities and reclaim your time.

How to Spend Less Time on Social Media:

1. Book your time. The hours can fly by when you’re browsing and posting. Keep track of your activities, so you’ll see where you need to cut down. Limit yourself to one or two daily time slots for social media.
2. Set a curfew. Searching your Facebook feed before bed can disrupt your sleep due to mental stimulation and the light from the screen. Turn off all your devices a couple of hours before retiring.
3. Silence your phone. Do you check your phone each time you get a notification? Remove temptation by turning off the sound or letting them go to email.
4. Rearrange your screen. Put your social media icons out of sight. Move them to the bottom of your phone, so you’ll have to scroll down to see them, or put them in their own folder.
5. Curate your groups. Shorten your feed by dropping out of groups you no longer need. If the list has stretched out over the years, you can trim it a little at a time.
6. Shrink your circle. Unfriending someone sounds harsh, but it may be the kind thing to do for both of you. If you have any reservations, you could mute or hide their posts instead.
7. Use technology. Some apps are like vaccines defending you from other apps you have trouble blocking on your own. If you feel like you’re still wasting too much time, try installing a program like Offtime, Flipd, or FocusMe.

What to Do with Your Time Away from Social Media:

1. Communicate offline. Use the time you’ve freed up to interact with your family and friends face-to-face or one-on-one. Plan a party or a coffee date. Send a letter or a greeting card. Share personal news with a phone call instead of a post.
2. Create a more active lifestyle. Engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity each week. Train for strength, flexibility, and balance too.
3. Get a hobby. Do something challenging and enriching. Play a musical instrument or grow your own vegetables. Join a sports league or a Meetup Group for comic book fans.
4. Volunteer your services. Give back to your community. Contact a local charity to help organize a fundraiser or shovel snow for elderly neighbors. Work on a political campaign or clean up a nearby park.
5. Plan a trip. Make your next vacation extra special. Research possible destinations and plan your itinerary. Borrow guidebooks from your library and talk with others who have visited there before. Be sure to leave room in your schedule for relaxation and spontaneous fun too.
6. Take a class. Sign up for courses online or at a community college. Earn certifications that will help you advance your career or study ancient architecture.
7. Read books. Rediscover the pleasure of reading books. Enjoy a lighthearted romance or a serious novel. Browse the nonfiction section for works on environmental issues or spirituality.

Becoming more mindful about your social media activities could mean a full detox or adjusting a few daily habits. Either way, achieving greater balance will increase your happiness and productivity.