Digital Boundaries to Save Your Sanity

Today, in 2 minutes or less, you’ll learn:   

1. Why digital boundaries are so important  
2. Five digital boundaries you can implement in your business to support your work-life balance   
3. Having a business and a life outside of your business is possible. 

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you are all enjoying a lovely Easter break with your family and friends and some precious time out for yourself. Given that it is the long holiday weekend, I thought digital boundary-setting might be a timely topic to discuss in today's newsletter.     

Stay conscious of how much your business creeps into your thoughts and day, and be proactive about setting solid digital boundaries. It is so easy to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, given we can always communicate through our phones and computers. However, I'm sure your original purpose in setting up your business is not to be entirely absorbed by it and glued to your phone all day, so establish some good habits early on.     

Some suggestions for how you might set some clear boundaries include the following:     

#1 Social media:    

Respond to socials during set times of your day. Try to avoid being on your phone all day long. Social media can also be full of giant rabbit holes you go down in the name of research, but you must focus on what moves the needle forward in your business. Don't let social media zap your time and energy. Also, use social media scheduling programs such as Canva and Tailwind so your content can continue to be published even when you focus on your busy mama life.  

#2 Get clear about where you can be contacted:   

Encourage your customers to contact you on select platforms, such as email or a post on a Facebook group. This action saves you from constantly checking Messenger, Instagram messages, text messages, and other communication platforms. So much time can be spent moving between all these platforms, which can be much better spent focusing on your needle-moving business tasks.     

#3 Don't make yourself available all the time:   

Be clear about your work hours and when customers can expect to hear back from you, and stick to them! Use an email scheduler so your customer receives your response during your set work hours, even if you are getting the work done outside of these hours. Gmail has a very easy-to-use scheduling function, which I often use to respond to my clients at a more reasonable time.     

#4 Use an out-of-office auto-responder:   

Use an out-of-office auto-responder to let your customer know when you will respond and that their correspondence is important to you. An auto-responder takes the pressure off you, reducing the feeling that you need to respond to an email as soon as a notification pops up or when your focus should be elsewhere in your business. You can also put answers to important frequently asked questions here so that your client can solve the problem for themselves before you can respond.    

#5 Can you automate using message bots?   

Use message bots to respond to customers on your behalf when they want to interact with you, though I encourage you to use these sparingly as you could begin to lose personal connection with your customer. ChatBot is a popular option used for Messenger, where if a customer makes contact with you, ChatBot can respond instantly with a series of responses you program it to give.    

Also, have days of your week when you don't work on your business! Please don't succumb to overwork and burnout. You are destined for big things, and enjoying your journey is essential.  

Happy holidays.