Most of what I write about is outgoing content – how to write it, how to publish it, how to leverage it, how to strategize around it.
Another big part of content is consumption – and I’m not just talking about looking at your own content from your readers’ perspectives (which is a hugely important topic – but more on that one later).
I’m talking about the fact that even though we’re content creators, we’re still content consumers. In fact, we might consume more content. We’re always looking to learn more, stay on top of trends, find inspiration.
There’s more content than ever out there. And this has never been truer as you can see with people (especially online, creative biz owners) shunning the overwhelm city of Google search and opting for a curated search instead (Pinterest) – where the most popular resources float to the top (less to choose from).
So this post is all about how you can take yourself through a content detox, realign with your priorities as a content consumer and manage incoming content going forward.
Your 12-Day Content Detox Plan
Day 1 and 2 – Take a Pause
Don’t consume any content and especially don’t save any content. You already have enough. It’s really important that before we start weeding through the content resources you’ve already saved – you have a bit of space.
Day 3 to 10 – Weeding through your content collection
Spend 30 minutes every single day for the next 7 going through your collected content resources.
Some places to check:
- Your digital folders
- USBs and hard drives
- Dropbox, Google Drive
- Bookmarks
- Trello
Last week I wrote a post about how to continue learning as a busy business owner – we want to do something similar with your incoming content. Identify where you actually need resources (gaps) and only save those types of resources you’ll actually use/need. It requires you to be a bit ruthless with your attention and time.
Day 11 to 14 – Create a storage system in a single place to store the content resources you’ll actually use
Our goal for these days is two-fold for these days:
- Pre-identify the types of resource or topics you’ll collect
- Come up with a way of sorting your that works for you (so you’ll actually use it consistently)
Finding great resources goes a little bit like this for most people “Oh this is great! I have to save so I can look at it later” – only later never comes.
We’ll base your new process on a when-then statement. “Oh this is great! I’ll categorize it and save it here so that when I’m working on (insert), I’ll look at it then.”
So you can pre-identify some gaps or projects you’re working on for the year, quarter or month in your business and create a folder for those specific resources.
Plus you’ll want to identify when you’re going to clear out the resources you no longer need – monthly, quarterly or annually. We definitely don’t want to spend all this time creating your system only to have it become a cluttered mess!
Another key to maintaining your content calm post-detox is to shift your focus from I’ll save this for later to what’s in here that I can implement right away. Cause once it’s implemented, there’s usually no need to hang onto it!
Want to learn a strategy to put your content on autopilot so content detoxes are unnecessary because you'll be able to create when you WANT to?
Learn it in this free on-demand workshop. Sign up here ↓
