3 ways to fight digital burnout in 2020

Let’s just make clear: burnout is not a new thing. It was a possibility even before 2020, too. You could be burnt out with your job, with family obligations, with life in general and even then, with too much time online. WHO recognises burnout as “an occupational phenomenon … that can influence health status”.

What’s new is how many of us went all-online and home office based this year, without having a chance to getting prepared for the risks. According to Gartner 88% of the organisations worldwide made it mandatory or encouraged employees to work from home after the pandemic has been declared, many of them practically from one day to the other. One of the risks we have not been prepared for is digital burnout, which you or your friends could already experience.

What is digital burnout? 

Digital burnout is exhaustion from being in a digital environment „too much”. How much is „too much” varies, just like burnout symptoms. 

In general, if you work, connect and seek fun online pretty much all the time, that sounds like „too much”. Human beings are not designed to be sitting at the same place, staring at a screen for hours. If you are a manager, then you are also under constant pressure to motivate and support your team, juggle new challenges and keep your business running in the middle of a pandemic at the same time.

Possible signs of burnout vary from boredom to total demotivation, include anxiety, low energy, low concentration or low tolerance. Not wanting to sit down to work on Monday again, show your face on another video meeting or hear about another new, exciting business innovation. Just wanting to scroll mindlessly, listen to podcasts or run away – based on your temper and the situation. 

Some things are for sure: digital burnout is real. Any one of us working online might go through it, and it only goes away if you do something about it.

 

What are the 3 ways to fight digital burnout?

No magic is required. We believe in starting as the basics: taking control of your digital experience, moving your body and taking it easy. 

Let’s dig in.

1. Take back control

What’s especially tiring about being online is that your default control is at best limited. 

  • Push notifications and reminders keep you in a constant state of false urgency,
  • your news feed is filled by algorithms with highly engaging propaganda, negativity, fake perfection and bullshit, and 
  • you’re more connected than ever to more strangers than ever.

 

The solution is to first notice the problem, and next to step up. Takes some time and thinking through, but it is well worth it.

  • Kill notifications that are not absolutely necessary, and set the rest around your daily schedule.
  • Cancel subscriptions you don’t need and also save some money.
  • Ban email junk and clean your mailbox.
  • Delete apps you don’t use (including social apps) and again, set notifications wisely.
  • Unfollow negative connections and worthless accounts, and pick valuable people and topics to follow, 
  • And so on …

 

You get the idea. Take back control in an environment designed to control you. You can do it to quite some extent. Give it a go and you might be nicely surprised.

2. Move your body

Even if you made sure that all your time online is spent well with meaningful interactions, undisturbed work and quality fun, you still may realise that you’re overwhelmed, tired and tense.

Don’t be surprised: sitting in front of your screen all day every day is not okay for your body and not okay for your mind. Your back and neck might hurt, you might have trouble getting a good nights’ sleep, your eye sight can weaken and even your brain cells and neurons stop working properly. 

Sounds pretty serious, right? So, it’s time to move it!

How? Start with the simplest things.

  • Walking is a gift to your body. Even if only for just 10 minutes, to just to grab a coffee or make a circle around the block, go and get outside. Leave your phone home for a change and take the stairs. Once outside, just put your right foot after the left. Either go alone and let your mind free up, or meet up with somebody and have a real life chat. Keeping a safe social distance is easier outside, anyway.
  • Stand up right. You may not have the time to leave home as often as you would like to due to work and restrictions. Even then, make sure to stand up for 5 to 10 minutes every hour. Actually, any change in your position might be good for your body time to time. Or even better – get a standing desk. The point is to stop just sitting in the same place all day.
  • Sit and move. Even when you’re just sitting at your desk, try to switch from typing and scrolling to something different time-to-time. Take notes on paper with a pen. Scribble. Correct your posture and stretch your muscles. Do not cross your legs, do not bend over. Be mindful of your body and move it, even if it’s just a tiny movement. It all adds up in the end.

3. Take it easy

Finally: don’t stress over it. Don’t treat digital detoxication and rehabilitation as another project you have to solve perfectly. You’d just worsen the situation. Staving off digital burnout is tough, and you have to get out of your comfort zone to succeed. Give it time and accept your progress and failures the same. What’s a good approach?

  • First: think and plan. Make a list of what you want and what you do not want to change. Take time to create your own digital burnout fight plan.
  • Next: pick some easy targets or your favourite ideas for a quick start.
  • Finally: start somewhere. Go step-by-step. Start with cancelling some notifications, deleting some apps or just get up from your chair for a 15 minute walk. Appreciate the effort you made and accept if you failed. In the end, this is about freeing you up not to bring you down.

 

Inspired yet? We hope so.

 

We at Codecool know a trick or two about how to make computers work for you to gain even more control. To learn more, check out services and methodology.

 

Take care and take control!

From Mess to Bless – Organise Your Slack in 7 Easy Steps

 

We at Codecool use Slack for daily collab and communication. It’s an amazing tool, we can only recommend it, if you have not yet started using it or any similar apps.

As opposed to email, Slack allows for a much more flexible view of your communication threads and you can follow conversations of work teams you are not even part of. There is a lot of extra potential in integrating it with different apps, and obviously the customisable emojis are really cool, too.

However, with the default settings you can easily end up with a chaotic sidebar and a disturbing amount of notifications, causing more pain than gain.

Especially when you start missing important tasks and messages in the noise.

Let us just share with you some tricks that worked for us. So that you, too, can quickly regain control over your Slack, by making it so neatly organised that even Marie Kondo would approve it.

The whole thing should not take more than 5 or 10 minutes max. And you can save that time daily from tomorrow just not having to fish for the latest important updates in a chaos.

So, let’s get to it!

Pick Your Stars

You can and should, as a first step of this clean-up, set the priority level for each slack channel and direct message on your sidebar.

1) Select max. 5 to 7 most important channels and messages that you want to keep an eye on at all times, and „star” them. Keep this list short and sweet to allow for a real quick overview at all times.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel or direct message on the sidebar, and then
2) click „Star channel” or „Star conversation”.

So this happens: The starred item moves up to the top of your sidebar! It will be in your sight all the time.

2) Then, from the rest delete those you don’t need anymore. They should not be on your sidebar at all.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel or direct message on the sidebar, and then
2) click „Leave channel” or „Close conversation”.

So this happens: The deleted item is gone from your sidebar.

3) Finally, mute those channels and messages that you don’t have time to follow on a regular basis. Mute as much as you can, you’ll thank yourself later.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel or direct message on the sidebar, and then
2) click „Mute channel” or „Mute conversation”.

So this happens: The muted item stays where it is, but gets a faded colour. You will not get notifications about new messages from this channel or conversation.

Basics done.

Next, you want to make sure to only receive useful notifications from the rest of the channels.

Say No to (Some) Notifications

Now you should take care of annoying and useless alarms. Anyways, you can always set up a reminder to any single message item, or follow a thread. So it is only wise to cut down on those notifications.

4) First, set general notification rules for your Slack.

Do this:
1) Click your profile pic in the right top corner,
2) choose „Preferences”,
3) set „Notify me about …. Direct messages, mentions and key words”, and
4) add your own selection of keywords.

So this happens: You’ll not get notified about just the above: direct messages, mentions of your name and keywords. However, channel-specific settings override general settings. So you have to check those as well to make sure it all works nicely.

5) Next, (re)set channel-specific notification rules for your unmuted channels.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel,
2) click „Change notifications” and
3) set the notifications you prefer for the specific channel.

So this happens: You’ll not get notified about things you really want to be notified about, from unmuted channels.

Almost there!

Now you just have to set a nice, organised view of your sidebar, with the most important things already at the top.

Level Up Your Sidebar Game

Last, but not least, set your sidebar in a way to get a clean view at your priorities. The starred items are already sitting at the top of your sidebar. Now you just need to make sure the rest of the sidebar is organised, too.

6) First, set the general sidebar view for your Slack.

Do this:
1) Click your profile pic in the right top corner,
2) choose „Preferences”,
3) click „Sidebar”,
4) set „Always show in the sidebar …. All DMs”, „Mentions & reactions”, „Saved items”, and
5) tick „List private channels separately”.

So this happens: Your sidebar will show you important info only. Your conversations will be shown in a separate group from your channels.

7) Finally, hide muted channels and conversations from your view.

Do this:
1) Click the 3 dots next to „Channels” category header,
2) move your cursor over „Show”,
3) choose „Unread channels only”, and
4) do the same for „Direct messages” („Unread direct messages only”).

So this happens: Your sidebar will not show you muted channels and conversations anymore. (Note that you did not change the setting of „Starred”, so you will still be notified about everything that happens in your starred channels and conversations.)

That’s it! This is how some of us at Codecool like to organise our Slack.

And now you did it, too. You made Marie Kondo happy:

marie_kondo_emoji_slack

Now grab a coffee, sit back, and enjoy you new, re-organised Slack!

You deserve it.