Reading time: About 3 minutes

If digital happiness has eluded you, consider walking away from your cellphone more often….

Does the idea of digital happiness seem as unattainable as a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Does it sound like the fantasy of having NO emails in your inbox? Or like the mythical state where you check Facebook for “just a minute” and actually emerge 60 seconds later?

Managing the digital world is especially tough for writers.

On the one hand, we’re supposed to find the time to write books, papers or reports, and yet we’re also supposed to be engaged in the time-sucking vortex called social media.

We’re expected to refer to carefully researched facts, and yet our gateway to those facts — the Internet — sits near our fingertips all day, beckoning us to read or ponder rather than write. It’s like trying to diet while working in a chocolate factory.

Email gives us the chance to reach our sources and other writers quickly and easily with no need to lick a stamp. But email takes five hours or more of our time every day. Five hours! That’s basically a part-time job we didn’t apply for and aren’t getting paid to do.

If you want to write more and spend less time in a digital dungeon, here are four practical tips for you:

1-Audit your digital habits

Track where your time actually goes. You can do this in real time by using apps that track your activities. Or you can do it retrospectively by reviewing your browser history.

Once you’ve figured out where the time is going, circle your biggest time drains. Is it social media platforms? Is it news sites? Is it checking your email?

Then, calculate the cost: How many writing hours are you losing weekly?

I’m not suggesting you judge yourself! Instead, I’m just inviting you to notice patterns. Your awareness of what’s happening is often enough to motivate change.

2-Create digital boundaries

What you need to do will depend, in part, on your own habits. But there are some general steps most people will benefit from taking:

Turn off all non-essential notifications. Allow nothing to beep, light up or otherwise disturb you. You do NOT want to be notified when you receive a text, an email or any sort of post. Your phone should be like a well-behaved Victorian child — seen and not heard.

If you have trouble walling yourself off in this way, here are some extra steps you can take:

• Use website blockers during writing sessions — Cold Turkey, Freedom, Focus (iPhone app) and Self-Control (Mac only) are all effective.
• Begin your day with writing before you allow yourself onto email or the Internet.
• Put your phone in another room while you’re writing. Or in a safe. Or launch it into space — whatever works.
• Consider using a separate writing device or user profile without social media access.
• Put your phone on airplane mode and unplug your Wi-Fi while you’re writing.
• Check email and social media only at certain times of the day and never first thing in the morning.

Separate creation time (writing) from consumption time (reading). You need to do both, but they are separate activities.

Finally, emphasize sustainability over perfection. Trying for perfection is a colossal distraction.

3-Develop phone and social media strategies

Most writers need to have some online presence. But instead of allowing this to bleed into every hour of every day, schedule specific times for social media engagement. And don’t make it first thing in the morning.

Restrict yourself to one social media platform. (Mine is LinkedIn. Say hi to me there.)

Use scheduling tools to batch content creation — meaning you do a bunch of it for say, 60 minutes and don’t do it again for several days. I use Buffer, and it allows me to schedule posts in advance.

Understand the difference between necessary marketing and mindless scrolling — make sure you do lots of the former and little of the latter.

If you want to use more than one platform, consider hiring help.

4-Reduce your cognitive load

Constant decision-making drains creative energy and leaves us feeling strung out and exhausted. If your life is too busy, it’s going to be hard for you to write, not just because you don’t have the time, but also because you don’t have the mental space.

Set rules and use automation to ease your load. I like the software TextExpander, which allows me to store text I use repeatedly. All I need to do is type the code I’ve saved, and voilà, the software enters the text into my document. It saves me hours of time every week.

I also write first thing in the morning, before checking email, so I have more energy and a calmer mind. Having a calm focus is a huge benefit for writers.

Take back your time

Your writing deserves protected space. And just because someone invented cellphones, email and social media in the last 30 to 40 years doesn’t mean you should be held hostage by them.

Enjoying wellness isn’t about seeking perfection — instead it’s about experimenting to see what’s going to work best for you.

Don’t look for a total overhaul — instead aim for minor changes that will compound with time. This is the best possible way to show self-respect for your creative work.

So, here’s my challenge to you: What’s one digital habit change that would give you back the most writing time? Start there.

If you liked this post, you’ll also like Ready to try a digital detox?

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My three-month writing accountability program, called Get it Done,  is opening up this week with a Jan 22 deadline for those who wish to start Feb. 1. If you want to a better, more sustainable writing or editing routine, check out more information about the program. Entry is possibly only four times a year.

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My video podcast last week suggested how to deal with perfectionism. You can watch the video or read the transcript, and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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How do you protect your own digital happiness? We can all learn from each other, so please, share your thoughts with my readers and me in the comments section, below. If you comment on today’s post (or any others) by Jan. 31/26, I’ll put you in a draw for a digital copy of my first book, 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better. To enter, please scroll down to the comments, directly underneath the related posts links, below. You don’t have to join Disqus to post! Read my tutorial to learn how to post as a guest. (It’s easy!)