Last week, I read an excellent article from the Financial Times by Tim Harford  entitled My Digital Reboot.  It was one of those articles which really resonated with me and had me examining my online behaviour.  We live in a digital world and it’s an integral part of my professional and personal life, I am not going to stop using it.  However I have noticed how my phone is always near and I spend too long scrolling through Twitter and Instagram.  I get great inspiration from these sites but it’s too easy to start looking at something that leads to something else and suddenly the evening has disappeared.  I am not going to delete my accounts, I enjoy the social network sites but I am going to remove them from my phone to stop the ease at which I browse.  At the start of this year, I organised my week as part of a self care project (yes I’m a sucker for all the latest trends) for example, Sunday is house admin, Saturday blog writing so I’m planning to add a social network evening too.

This week I’ve minimised the use of my phone and enjoyed more creative projects and felt so much more refreshed and focused for it. There are apps which I will keep on my phone, my Spotify account as I love my music and podcasts, some photography apps, email, Parentmail, the school app and of course Scrabble which has always been one of my favourite way to spend a free 10 minutes.  As well as spring cleaning my phone, I’m also going to keep it away from me, to keep it in my handbag or on my bureau at home and just use it when I purposefully want to rather than as a distraction.  I realise I’m now the role model for my children, I want them to have a mobile as a phone and not to be an essential part of their being.