3 Steps to a Zero Waste Mind
Unplug, structure & be productive
It’s Monday afternoon, 3.23 pm, you opened your 49th E-Mail, your browser shows 23 open tabs and your phone counts 12 new notifications.
We are uploading, downloading and accumulating digital trash. What if you could free up some mind space and focus on the important things?
Being zero waste is a state of mind.
Once you start a waste free life, you’ll realise it’s not only about minimizing your physical waste, it also applies to mental and even digital waste.
In fact, you stop wasting time and energy by default.
Here are 3 steps on how to erase digital trash, restructure and get a clearer view:
1. Unplug and go offline
To remove the mass of data you’re piling daily, we need to zoom out a bit.
Do you know that Jewish people who strictly observe the Sabbath are completely without electricity for one day a week? No cooking with an oven, no lights switched on, no electric toothbrush and of course no digital devices. Why? To detox.
Okay, that might sound a bit extreme. But what about unplugging from your phone and computer for a day?
Take a day off. Completely offline. Yes, 24 hours without your little robot friends. You’ll survive this — promise ;). See it as an experiment.
Benefits of being offline
Usually, people experience the following benefits while being offline:
- You sleep better.
- Your focus is better.
- You free up time for things you love.
- You connect better to your body, mind & soul.
- You will enjoy being online again.
Sounds like you could give it a try?
Here is what I experienced in the last months while I was offline for a day: I wrote a bunch of postcards to my beloved ones, I danced with 10 drunk business men in a park, I got invited to eat Tuna noodles with John who takes care of 10 stray dogs, I read a cooking book from the first to the last page, I watched the clouds and I jumped into an ice cold river.
I could continue like this for a long time — The essence is I had fun, I lived in the moment and enjoyed life with an empty mind — offline.
Your thoughts will change when you’re not constantly distracted by the newsfeed of your phone, you’ll meet and talk to people that you usually would have overseen and you will see your surroundings with different eyes.
Tell your family and friends that you’re off for one day, so no one is concerned. You can even inspire your business partners with an automatic reply about your offline day. Make it an exciting adventure!
2. Structure your day
An offline day is also the perfect opportunity to find a structure for your day to day life. Our minds like structure, routine and basic frameworks.
Waking up at the same time every day, developing eating habits or having specific time slots for work and taking breaks brings ease and stress release. You are automating your day, your to-dos become part of a structure and you create habits that will improve whatever you like to practice.
If you know that you’re waking up at 7 am, start to work at 9 am and eat for lunch at 1 pm everyday this can bring more security to your day and enhance concentration.
This is what you are already doing? Good! But maybe it’s time to restructure your day in challenging times like these. Are all the habits you’ve gotten used to really beneficial for your body and mind?
Rethink — Restructure — Reload.
3. Be more productive
Now that you have structures for your day, let’s go into more detail.
How many mails are you storing in your inbox? Are there currently 23 mails that you haven’t read? Is this creating anxiety and stress? Is this building pressure and weight on your shoulders?
Let’s remove it.
What if your inbox would show 0 at the end of a long day. Would this feel like you have the license to relax? To enjoy your evening? To have a glass of wine?
Empty your inbox, stop distraction & be productive
Let me introduce 3 tools to you that can help declutter your gmail inbox, being less distracted and being more productive.
Boomerang for gmail
Schedule your e-mails. Sounds super simple, that’s what it is. So here is how I work through my mails every morning in less than 1 hour.
Schedule your e-mails. Sounds super simple, that’s what it is. So here is how I work through my mails every morning in less than 1 hour.
Let´s say you have 30 mails in your inbox on Monday morning, you can group them by:
- Needs a simple reply in less than 2 min: answer the e-mail and archive.
- Needs follow up work: create a to-do connected to your calendar and archive.
- Reply another time: boomerang this mail in 2 hours, 4 days or 1 month. This way you make sure, you don´t forget about anything. Let your conversation partner know in a one liner, when you are going to follow up.
Boomerang also allows you to pause your inbox. I love this feature because it ends any kind of interruptions and you can focus on one thing at a time.
“Go Fucking Work”
How often are you checking your social media a day? Does it sound little to you to only check 3 times a day? There are plenty of applications that help you to stop being distracted by social media or websites that disturb you from your actual work. “Go Fucking Work” is one of them and here is how it works:
- Choose what websites prevent you from being productive.
- “Go Fucking Work” is blocking soul-sucking websites and reminds you of going back to work.
- You can schedule pauses when you need a break and want to check your social media channels on purpose.
This application is pretty straight forward, so If you don’t like the tone of voice you could also opt for others like focus or feedzen.
Pomodoro method
CONGRATS! Now that you’ve got a 0 mail inbox and all the distractions are erased, you can focus on being productive.
Here is how the pomodoro method works:
- Choose a task that you want to work on.
- Start the tomato timer and work on that task for 25 min.
- After each task take a 5 min break.
- Repeat 4 times.
- Take a 10 min or longer break.
So after 4 rounds 4 tasks should be done. With this method you also get a better feeling about how long things that you are working on actually take. Summing up, you get closer to setting realistic goals, rather than under or overestimating yourself.
Being zero waste is a state of mind. Once you cut out all the noise around, you have the time and space to focus on the really important things in life.
Rethink waste and enjoy your day.
* Stefanie Behrendt is a guest blogpost writer for Orange Grove’s blog. Stefanie is an alumna of Orange Grove and founder of wegozero.co. The views expressed in this guest blogpost do not necessarily reflect the views of Orange Grove.
