In an overly ‘out of control’ world.
When you are constantly being told what you can and can’t do, it’s easy to feel lost and that you have no control over your life.
Simple online steps can truly help you feel like things are OK, and you have things in place as you like them.
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0:02
All right, Christie here on Sunday the 21st of February, 2021, as I’m recording this, ready for the 23rd when it will be broadcast, and the title today is going to be. Get organised online and take back control in an overly out of control world, because it’s a bit crazy, crazy at the moment, isn’t it, and but do a quick intro, just as usual on episode, 28, which I think I forgot to mention. I’ve done two lines for every chapter of my book. This week, which sounds a bit odd if you’re not a writer, you might not understand it but going through an edit of a book you go through it, no end of times to the point where you hate your book almost because you go through, edit, after edit, edit the same on the second edit now I have two books in a series The first books already been out, but to recap, make sure I’ve got my timelines right I’ve read through both novels. What I’ve done is for each chapter. I’ve written just two lines that sum up that chapter, whose point of view, it was and what the action was. And I’m going to check that against my spreadsheet plan because no matter how much you plan a book. If it’s fiction especially your characters takeover, which is great. And they get a voice of their own and they sometimes go for like a bit of a tangent that you didn’t expect. So it’s quite good to get it back on track and realise that. Actually, They didn’t have that happen there, it happened in a different time place. It might be that something’s happened, and you’ve forgotten it completely, which I have done in my first book I’ve got something that happens that I’ve totally forgotten about and I’ve not even mentioned it since so I need to add that in. So that’s quite a handy tip if you’re editing anything. And I’ve also launched my new secret pen name in a new genre, and I’m really excited about getting some of that work upon mine and seeing how well it’s received because it’s a bit scary when you’re doing something new, which I’m always telling you push your boundaries, don’t get bogged down, back to the topic. Get organised online. Sounds really trivial to just get stuff organised but we are in a world at the moment, no matter where we are, I think, on the globe that we’re not really in control of our own lives away, we’re being told by people, what we can and can’t do. All for our benefit but it just seems as if we’ve lost control a little bit and just trivial things like getting your own world and your own computer and your online presence in some sort of order can just give you that back a little bit of control, and just give you a little bit of balance, again, so hopefully these tips will just help you a little bit and if you are really struggling and I know a lot of us are, please please please reach out, I’m on social media, I’m not an expert. I’m not a psychiatrist or anything like that, but my communities are both there to help you and to support you and to hold you up when you need it and give you a hand up, or for you to give a hand up to someone else So come and join us in those communities if you’re really struggling, but I really want to get you organised online. So I’m going to dive in.
3:20
If we can do a social media audit that can definitely make a difference to our mentality and mental health, because there is so much negativity trolls doom and gloom, you know there is an expression now which I’m sure is in the urban dictionary called Doom scrolling where you just scroll through all the bad news all the time and it’s a bit addictive and you go down the rabbit hole of clickbait and celebrities on beaches in Dubai and all the rest of it and it’s just, you never seem to get out of it and by doing a social media audit it can really help because. What I’m talking about is going through each account, whether it’s instagram, twitter, facebook, whatever it is, whatever forum you use, go into your friends list, and actually look down the people who are on your friends list. Do you even know them, have you ever communicated with them, if it’s somebody that you think actually I’d really like to get in touch with that person. Just send them a DM it doesn’t have to be anything heavy or anything intrusive, it can just be, you know, our scrolling through my friends list. So you just want to reach out and say hello. That’s it, that’s all it takes. But you might also find that there are people who will you’ve moved on from. They may have been on your list for years they may have only been added last month but I know during the political dilemmas that we’ve had over the past year I’ve deleted quite a lot of people out of my lists because they weren’t the people I thought they were. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m not being judgmental of them, we just have different views and I’m quite happy with my views and they’re quite happy with theirs but they don’t mix, so I cross them off my friends list, and they seem to be a big shame around being unfriended but it really doesn’t matter it’s just the same as anything else. As I’ve explained to people before and if you haven’t heard this scenario might help a little bit. Just imagine that you’re going into a conference centre and it’s full of people. If only we could do that nowadays but you go into a conference centre full of people is a bit like my nightmare because I’m an introvert. You’ll meet some people who you will hit it off with straight away. You’ll stay friends, you’ll send DMS you might even get in touch later on, have networks, you might meet up and become best buddies. You love all the people who you will meet who you will take an instant dislike to and walk away from without even exchanging a handshake or a business card. And then you’ll get everything in between. That’s the same online, you will get people who you really take to who you make true friends with and that has been a saviour of social media they share that. And the past year, that it really has helped people through what has been a massive global crisis. But we also have picked up people along the way who we’ve left behind in that conference centre, but we haven’t left behind online. So go in and clear out people that you just don’t particularly want in your list anymore. And don’t be embarrassed about it, empower yourself, you know, it’s your friends list, it’s your social media. Nobody else is in control of that you are. So go in there and tidy that up and reach out to those people that you know and maybe support them go to their timeline and look and it might be that they need some support with work or they want some promotion for a book they’ve written or a piece of artwork they’ve created and help them out by sharing it on your timeline. So be active and be interactive with your friends online if you can, and maybe make it sort of a new plan that every day he’ll reach out to five different people or just click on five different posts and share them. It’s not a big deal and it really does become a social network which is the whole point of social media. That was the name of a film wasn’t it social network, which I haven’t watched yet and he’s a bit of a man Apparently so. I’ll try not to compare it to that.
7:21
The next thing you need to do after social media is your email, and I’ve got a freebie on this if anybody wants one just reach out and it’s about organising your email if you’re one of these people who’s got 1000s of emails in your inbox, or in you’d never look at your spam because it’s just too intimidating. There are 10 tips in my freebie as to how to sort that out. But go through your inbox and find all the ones that you don’t connect with anymore It might be that you get an email from somebody every week and every week all you do is press Delete. We’ll scroll to the bottom of that email, and it’s a legal requirement that you have unsubscribe at the bottom of that email mine have it. Everybody’s has to have it, if they don’t realise a few sneaky companies who make it really difficult, but the majority people are fine. And unsubscribing isn’t an insult to anybody. It’s actually helping them because that it’s pointless having people on their mailing list who aren’t interested in them or their products or their services, just wasting their time and yours. So go through all the emails that you never read anymore. And, you know, make it a thing that every day you’ll spend 10 minutes on your email sorting it out and it will soon come down and be manageable. And also create some folders. You might create a folder that’s deal tomorrow, you know if it’s something that you really need to deal with that week but you can’t deal with that minute, and just get on top of your email because it’s like having junk mail at your door. You know if you walk through the door every day and there’s a massive pile of junk mail that stops the door opening and you trip over it and it’s just stresses you. It’s the same with your email that every time we go to that email box if it’s full. They’re just nagging at you and you’ll feel guilt. You’ll feel pressure to do, you might sort of click on something that you didn’t mean to, and get spammed because there are so many scams out there now with financial emails especially you know just get on top of your email and deal with it the same as you would when a letter comes through and you open the envelope that morning. Do the same with your email. Computer tidy up your computer, whether it be a laptop iPad, whatever. There will be so much hidden junk in your computer you will not believe it’s so quick to build up. So create a folder structure if you haven’t already got one. If you need any help without getting touched and I can go through that with you can have maybe a chat online or whatever about it, but create a folder structure, move things into those folders don’t ever have something in your computer that hasn’t got a name that you understand, if you’ve downloaded something from the internet you might have got a load of gobbledygook because people might not have labelled it properly when they’ve input it. So go through and label things so that you know what they are, because if you want to keep them. You want to be able to find them. So go through that. So things out. A good way to do it is once everything’s in folders and you might have to do this for half an hour a day for a month I don’t know I don’t know how much of a mess your computer’s in. But backup your computer before you start as well, and backup every week, make a note to backup your computer every week to either a hard drive or the cloud. Because if that computer crashes and burns you will lose things, and that isn’t something you want to happen. Then once you have a folder structure there click on each folder and sort by date, and look through from your oldest to newest and look through what there is in there and a lot of it won’t be relevant anymore. It might be you’ve got three and four different versions of things. So, you can delete a lot of stuff and empty your trash bin every day as well. If you’ve got stuff that you want to keep but your computer’s getting a bit tired and a bit worn out because it’s memory isn’t that big invest in a good portable hard drive and I would recommend doing this anyway, and backup all the folders that you want to keep it might be photographs they take a massive amount of room, my videos for my YouTube channel, I put them on a separate hard drive because they’re massive with capacity. So, so things out onto a portable hard drive and keep that somewhere safe, so that you know you’ve got a backup if anything ever happens. And just clear out all your online clutter while your computer clutter.
11:39
The next thing, your phone. Sorry, but when was the last time you backed up your phone. And when was the last time you cleared out the junk on your phone. Have you got screen after screen after screen maybe even folder after folder of apps, half of which you never use but they were useful at the time, go through your apps list. Get rid of apps you don’t use switch off notifications if your phone’s constantly being in an annoying yeah cuz I’ve discussed this before as well how stressful notifications can be, because it makes you feel like you can never get away from your phone. But tidy up the phone as well, and back it up because again if you lose your phone. There’s a lot of stuff in your phone it’s almost like having a wallet isn’t it with all your credit cards in there nowadays it’s like your address Boogie Filofax your bank details you personal diary the whole lot. So make sure you look after it, maintain it, clean it, especially nowadays with the virus cleaning every day or every week depending on when you go out. Okay, so hopefully those tips will give you a bit of a map to get organised. So just to recap, a social media audit, an email audit computer audit and folder structure and your phone audit, if you’ve got a tablet obviously do II tablet as well. And put stuff on a portable hard drive or into the cloud. And don’t just find it all in the cloud and think, oh I’ll shove it in there and forget about it because cloud storage can cost money but also what if that wasn’t there, you know. And what if, if you’re going to put it in a cloud and never use it again, do you really need it. Could you delete it. Could you just email it yourself and leave it in an email, that’s a good way of backing things up by email yourself, but remember when Google crashed the other day of the week. Nobody could get on anything that belonged to Google. That was emails Google Drive. Anything YouTube the law. It all went, so a portable hard drive is a really good idea, held that helps book recommendation. I want to give you a totally escapist book this week because I’ve given you a quite a bit of work to do up on it so I didn’t want to give you another book on how to get organised, you don’t need that. I’ve given you some simple tips, but this book is brilliant is one of my favourites. And the title is the 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared. What a brilliant title for a book. So just to repeat that seek and search for it. The 100 year old man who climbed out the window, and disappeared. It’s by Jonas, your unison, or Jonas Jonas and are presuming Jonas but it’s absolutely fantastic Escape is both It’s lovely. It’s gentle, it’s just something you can read quickly it’s not a long book but it’s just beautiful. So, I would really love you to read that, give me your opinion on it I’ll obviously put the link in the show notes like I always do. And don’t forget, as well, that you can go to my podcast my Patreon and get an exclusive podcast episode. And you can also get free resources on my website, and my books need another one of which will be coming out shortly. So that’s it for today, and I will catch you again next time. Thank you so much for joining me and get organised don’t get stressed by.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai