I am in the middle of teaching a six-week class called Detox Your Life. Discover More Joy.

This week’s focus is on detoxing our schedules.  This is one of those things that can really get away from us…. before we know it, our day is doing us instead of us doing our day.  Our days can become a slippery slope of meetings, emails, phone calls, texting, TV, and internet surfing that leads to a week, a month, a year that happened by default, rather than by design.If we want to create our ideal day and string a bunch of them together to create the life of our dreams, we need to learn how to clear the clutter from our schedules and be intentional about how we spend our time.

Here are some tips to help you clear the clutter from your schedule…

  1. Go to a meeting and leave with NO additional responsibilities. This was something I would challenge myself to when I worked in the corporate world.  It’s not easy, but it feels great to walk out of a meeting without a whole new list of tasks to do.  If you can do this this week, give yourself a star.
  2. Resign from a volunteer commitment that does not feed you. Giving of our time is a wonderful way to contribute.  But make sure that the time you give also feeds you and contributes to your vision of the life you’re creating.
  3. Switch to HULU. This is my new favorite.  I’ve been watching this season of The Bachlorette (I know, I know….) on HULU.  Yes, I do need to wait until the next day, but it’s FREE, I’ve eliminated a cable TV bill and I can watch TV anywhere that has an internet connection.  Check it out to see if you can get your favorite shows on HULU.
  4. Hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) to handle everything from balancing your checkbook, to bookkeeping for your business, to making travel plans, to managing your social media accounts, and much much more. You can hire a VA for as little as 1-5 hours a week.  Offload all the stuff that distracts you from focusing on the things you are best at and that give you the most joy. I just submitted my request to AssistU this week, and now I have several well qualified candidates I can interview and choose from to offload the stuff that distracts me from the stuff I LOVE doing the most.
  5. Unsubscribe from everything. The unsubscribe button is your friend.
  6. Subscribe to NutshellMail… to get your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn sent to you once or twice a day and end the constant trolling to see what is new.  It’s FREE.  Be sure to customize your settings so you only see what you really want to see.
  7. Stop the endless stream of automatic email notifications. The default setting for all your social media accounts is to notify you about everything.  But you can turn those off.  Here’s how to turn off the notifications you don’t want on Facebook, Meetup, Twitter and LinkedIn… and set yourself FREE.

Here’s how to manage notifications on Facebook…

  • Click on Account at the top of the page
  • Select Account Settings
  • Click on the Notifications tab
  • Uncheck everything you don’t want to be notified about

On Meetup, this is a bit more tricky.  This is what you do….

  • Click on the meetup group you are a part of
  • From the menu, select Members/My Profile
  • At the top of your profile, you will see a Settings hyperlink – click that
  • Uncheck everything you don’t want to receive a notification about.

If you are on Twitter, here’s what you do…

  • Go to your profile page
  • Click Settings at the top
  • Click Notices, and uncheck everything you do not want to receive emails about

If you are on LinkedIN, here’s what you do…

  • Log into your account
  • Click Settings at the top
  • Scroll down to view Email Notifications
  • Click on Receiving Messages.
  • There you can adjust your settings, including selecting NO EMAIL for everything

Phewwww.  It feels good to get the clutter out.  Now go ahead… create your ideal day.