Happy Monday, friends! Today is the last day before Instagram changes its algorithm, but we will not be asking you to turn on Instagram notifications (and other social media at that) for our posts. Why?
We believe time is our most valuable asset as business owners, and it’s worth protecting.
Let us explain. You know those mornings where you wake up feeling ready to seize the day and conquer the world before you’ve even had a single cup of coffee? The days where you check one item after the next off your to-do list and feel like a total machine? We love days that start like that. But we find that days that start that way don’t always end that way.
Imagine for a second that we’re in the middle of a task.
And then we hear a ding!
Or a buzz!
Or a woosh!
Or our phone lights up just enough to catch our attention in our peripherals.
So we look. And we click.
And then we click again. And then that click leads to another click. Pretty soon we’ve click-click-clicked ourselves down some rabbit hole full of likes and comments and viral videos and then we look up and wonder things like, “How did we even get here?” and “Who’s Instagram account is this anyway?” and “Wait. Did I just watch another cat video?”
And by the time we look up, the clock is our enemy. It always moves fastest when we aren’t watching it. Now there’s not enough time to get done the thing that we set out to do when the coffee was fresh and the world was worth conquering.
So what can we so about it? We wanted to share one quick trick that has saved us so many hours.
Ready?
We turned off our notifications.
All of them.
Especially the “push” ones. You know. The ones that light up your phone. The banner ones too.
When someone comments on our Instagram, our phone does not light up. When we get a new email in our inbox, nothing dings. Nothing flashes. Our phone does not light up and our laptops do not make a sound.
Why?
time is our most valuable asset as business owners, and it’s worth protecting
Remember that social media platforms will come and go, but there are also some timeless truths we can take comfort in whenever things feel like they’re shifting right underneath us. We believe our business will survive ANY kind of change in this world, whether it’s economic, technological or even cultural, as long as our number one focus continues to be to love and serve the people around us with our whole hearts. Those three simple words, love and serve, are the cornerstone of our business and, really, our whole lives. As business owners, we can take today to recommit to adding real value to people’s lives. To sharing what we know. To making people smile. To sharing life’s most beautiful pieces. To offering hope, encouragement and hopefully a good laugh or two. Let’s recommit to that! The rest will take care of itself.
In the spirit of adding value, we’re giving away five of our favorite photography life hacks, and a year long subscription to The Monday Minute, which is packed with weekly tips and tricks to help your grow your business. You can get both absolutely for free by clicking here!