Month: January 2021

My Mantra For the year 2021 Revealed

Bardees, , , 3 Comments

I finally selected my mantra for the year 2021.

I have been choosing a word of the year for 2 years now and this year I decided to choose a mantra.

My word of the year 2019 was Teach because I wanted to start sharing what I learn through weekly instagram videos. My word for 2020 was Clarity which I was seeking through three pillars inspired by the book Clarity First, mindfulness, questions and self-care.

I couldn’t choose just one word for 2021 as I have been thinking about several themes to live this year.

One of the themes is The Practice, which is committing to my creative practice day in and day out as Seth Godin so brilliantly explained in his latest book with the same title. My practice for this year is going to be writing. I want to take my writing very seriously and hone this skill by committing to daily writing on this blog starting Feb 1st 2021. Writing more can only improve my podcast and my learning capabilities because writing will help me synthesize the information I’m consuming.

Another theme I’m thinking about is Life of Focus based on the amazing course I enjoyed by Cal Newport and Scott H. Young. I have been fascinated by the ideas in this course which you’d be familiar with if you listened to Cal’s podcast or read his books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism or Scott’s book Ultralearning. In this course Cal and Scott defined focus as “The ability to guide your attention in ways you desire, not just following the random tugs of the environment.” I believe that our attention is one of our most valuable and limited assets and that’s why I have started my year with the digital declutter challenge. I believe that we need to be stingy with how we spend our attention and that improving our focus is a skill we can learn through practice. Here is this word again.

I have also been trying to commit to tracking my deep work (focused) sessions at work and keeping a tally of them as advised by Cal over and over. Deep work session are 30-minute intervals where I focus solely on one task which requires mental effort, no task switching, no glancing at my email inbox or God forbid my phone. This year I want to contribute more value with less time. Committing to such sessions will improve my focus muscles and my attention quality and help me exaclty do that.

I’ve been also wanting to better redirect my attention to the present moment where life happens after completing The Power of Now Book discussion series (Arabic) in 2020. This way I will feel more alive. My family will feel my attention with them too as I practice being present. My morning meditaiton practice will support that. My improved digital wellbeing -after the digital declutter challenge ends and implementing the rules I’ll set moving forward- will create strict boundaries between family time and work time. I also recently realized that my social media time is work time. I’m not there to scroll. I’m there to share my work that I do here in my blog and in my podcast. It’s not ok to work during family time. It’s not ok to do it when I’m at my 9-5 job. I’d better start setting proper work hours for my personal creative work including my social media.

Practice Focused Attention

  • Practice: Writing, Podcasting, Meditating & Deep Work consistently.
  • Focused: Tracking Deep/focused sessions at my job. Creating Boundaries between work and family with digital wellbeing rules.
  • Attention: With a life of focus and minimized distractions I will have more attention to spend on meaningful connections and be more present wherever I am.

What about you? Have you chosen your word/mantra of the year? It’s such a beautiful exercise, here are some resources to help you that I shared in my newsletter.

My Mantra For the year 2021 Revealed

Digital Declutter Challenge Update – Week 3

Bardees, , , , Leave a comment

My screen time this week is down by almost 50% compared to my previous behavior where I only used my phone for an average of 3 hours 15 minutes daily, and that includes kindle and maps. I’m so proud.

All my rules have been working just fine. I met a friend for coffee last week and I didn’t have a book on me so I waited for her staring out the window which was a nice change.

Some friends reached out via whatsapp saying they missed me and looking forward for my return and I reminded them to check my newsletter where I have been sharing my most important updates regarding this challenge.

A friend said she just realized I was in a challenge so my insight is it takes around 2 weeks for people who regularly interact with you to start missing you on social media.

I have noticed that my email list’s growth is slowing down which is making Instagram’s value for my work clearer as it has been the key source of newsletter subscriptions. Instagram then is for marketing my work. I will go back to it after this challenge to share what I create for my core work which is my podcast and blog and hopefully future online workshops and to engage in Live sessions with my dear followers and encourage them to stay in touch with me via my newsletter.

I have also decided to extend my challenge to February 15th . One week after kids start the 2nd non-online (fingers crossed) school semester and we settle into our new routines.

You can listen to this update in Arabic in episode 17 of my podcast below:

Digital Declutter Challenge Update – Week 3

Digital Declutter Challenge Update – Week 2

Bardees, , , , , , 2 Comments

I am happy to report that my phone usage has dropped to an average of 4 hours a day compared to my pre-challenge 6 hours average in best case scenraios.

My Whatsapp usage didn’t decrease overall, however my whatsapp scattered screentime has been optimized and I found the challenge getting easier in week 2 as I updated Whatsapp rules to the following:

  1. Whatsapp’s hourly usage is open until 9am when I get to work due to the voice notes I love to send and receieve from my friends who wake up early especially during my walk or commute.
  2. I block whatsapp when I start getting dressed and applying makeup to leave for work because I might get distracted by messages if I check them.
  3. I set work profile for whatsapp as 7 minutes/hour until 6pm.
  4. If I need whatsapp for work communciations I use whatsapp web which I don’t think is distracting at all.
  5. I still block whatsapp between 6pm and 9pm, this step has had the most magical impact on my evening routine and impproved quality of attention to my family.

I am getting bored fast with gmail and I kept the habit of cheking it after lunch break as a transitional activity between break and work.

I have noticed that I am remebering my dreams vividly since starting this challenge. It’s like the decrease in images entering my brain is making it easier for my brain to retrieve its own creations. Interesting, no?

I am also reflecting on the importance of real-time sharing. Do I really need to stop reading and share that book quote snapshot with my groups on spot? Is it really necessary to interrupt admiring the sunset and start talking about the beauty of its image with family memebers? Do I have to share the kid’s cute game while they are playing it and thus leave them? if not physially, attentionally?

This is something I will really take into account when ending this challenge. I love to share cool things I read or photos I take or podcasts I listen to. Changing this might mean I take screenshots or photos all day and share them all at a specific time with my family and friends, or add them to to my social media stories. I will always remember what I wanted to share if I just look into my gallery. If I feel the urge I will say to myself why now? can it wait? maybe add it to my awesome weekly newsletter?  Let’s see where this goes.

Read all about week 1 here.

You can listen to this update in Arabic in episode 16 of my podcast below:

https://bardees.simplecast.com/episodes/16

Digital Declutter Challenge Update – Week 2

Digital Declutter Challenge Update-Week 1

Bardees, , , , , , 4 Comments

I have started a month-long digital declutter challenge on January 1st 2021. This is my 2nd time so my hope is I have learned from some of the mistakes of my previous challenge that I did almost 2 years ago.

As advised by Cal Newport in his book Digital Minimalism and in his course with Scott H. Young Life of Focus these are the steps I followed.

Step 1: Divide the technologies used in personal life into the below:

  • Optional Technologies (as in being away from them would not get me into trouble): Facebook/Facebook page manager/ Facebook business suite/Instagram/ Netflix/ Twitter.
  • Mixed Technologies:
    • Whatsapp after working ours
    • Gmail: not using it might cause communication hang-ups but also it’s a key source of distraction for me.
    • Audible/Spotify: they are not mandatory of course but they are key source of learning for me. Please note work email is not part of the challenge as this challenge is about personal life technologies.
  • Mandatory Technologies:
    • Whatsapp- during working hours: used for work and meetings updates and also by kids’ school.

Step 2: Remove the optional technologies and set rules for the others:

On day -1 of the challenge I have created the following rules:

  1. Remove Facebook apps from my phone with plan not to check them all month.
  2. Remove Instagram and IGTV from phone with plan to check DMs and comments once a week  from laptop in order to avoid the “forbidden fruit” feeling.
  3. Remove Netflix from from phone and only watch it on big TV screen with family or one show episode if alone.
  4. Check Gmail once a day at a fixed time for 15 minutes
  5. Limit Whatsapp usage time and block it between 6pm and 9pm which is family/homework/bedtime routine time.


The Actual of Week 1:

  • Facebook: I needed to check a replay of a webinar on Facebook that  I subscribed to before starting this challenge so I opened facebook on web browser to watch it and wasn’t really the least interested to see what those red notifications were about. I’m also opening it temporarily for few days to follow up on a limited-time group for very useful decluttering challenge  where I saved the Facebook group link for direct access skipping newsfeed and can’t see any notification.
  • Instagram: 100% commitment, at the end f of week 1 I  spent 20 minutes checking and replying to DMs and comments on my posts through Facebook business suite on web which feels like an email manager without all the scrolling, Thanks to my friend Nadia for this idea.  I also set up auto-reply telling friends I’m away for the month with my email address, so I am not sure I’ll log in to Instagram next week. Confession: I asked a friend to tell me how many followers I got while she was already on her Instagram. It is worth mentioning, however, that  I felt relieved a bit of the commitment/pressure to post and engage regularly. I’m gaining back space and renewing my creative energy that I can use for other types of content that matter so much to me like my podcast and blog. 
  • Netflix: 100% commitment.
  • Gmail: 100% commitment but noticed that I prefer to check it right after lunch break not in the morning, as a transitional leisure time back to work. I noticed also that what really wastes time is what I actually click on in my gmail not gmail itself. Clicks takes me to so many places: shopping, reading, checking statistics of my content, and guess what? Instagram missed me and sent me an email update at the end of week 1 for the number of followers I got! feeling so threatened dear IG? that was funny, i didn’t even realize instagram sends emails, or actually most of us are not giving them the chance to. Back to gmail, I’m trying to be more mindful about not opening new links without reading those opened links in my tabs from the day before.  I might also consider feedly again, but not sure yet.
  • Whatsapp: What’s working: 6pm-9pm Whatsapp block is working so well for me. What’s not working yet:  I set out to use Whatsapp 45 minutes only but that was unreasonable compared to my previous behavior of 60-90 minute average so I tried 75 minutes but time was up by 2pm then I tried 90 minutes and time was up by 5:30pm. Then, I started experimenting  limited hourly Whatsapp time dividing 120 minutes by 14 waking hours (minus the 3 hours blocked), so I get around 8 minutes /hour and the app I use helps me track that so I’ll try this technique between 9am and 6pm and report back.

A funny cosmic incident happened in week 1. My smart watch galaxy e-fit-which was only allowed to show SMS/Whatsapp sender names notifications plus calls- stopped pairing with my phone! I guess/wish it is conspiring to help me in this challenge, I hope it’s a temp hiccup and that I don’t need to replace it. I’m happy it’s working fine as my steps tracker though.

Finally I am excited to report that I am enjoying my evening times the most with this challenge plus less kids’ homework load during January , so more fun time with kids. I’m putting them to bed then checking my Whatsapp which has become like a treat.

You can listen to this update in Arabic in episode 14 of my podcast below.

Digital Declutter Challenge Update-Week 1