Author: EvieBurke

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

I spent part of Saturday setting up my new computer in my office.

You probably didn’t know that I spent most of September working in my living room on my old laptop off a card table.

Yes, part of it was that I wanted a change of scenery, but most of it was frustration with my technology.

You see, I realized toward the end of August that I was wasting a lot of time watching YouTube and playing games, both on my phone. And those are warning signs that there’s a problem.

Normally, it’s a sign I’m avoiding something—you know, do anything but that thing that really needs to be done that I’m procrastinating about.

But that wasn’t it.

So, I started noticing what was going on when this happened.

I was surprised and annoyed to realize that it was my own impatience with technology.

You see, my previous desktop computer was so old that the version of Windows it used was no longer supported and that meant my browser of choice was no longer getting updates and was only opening about 60% of the websites I wanted it to and it was slow opening other things. Oh, and Windows Explorer would crash about once a day and the blue screen of death would appear about once a week.

So, while I would wait for things to load or reboot, I’d pull out my phone. I didn’t realize how normal and time-consuming all of this had become until I took a step back. So, while I would wait for things to load or reboot, I’d pull out my phone.

I didn’t realize how normal and time-consuming all of this had become until I took a step back.

I tried a couple of different workarounds, and what I found worked best was my old laptop (that doesn’t close because accidentally broke the hinge months ago) and it was easiest to set up in the living room.

Here’s the problem with that though—my living room isn’t my office. While my husband is super sweet and understanding, the living room wasn’t a permanent solution.

So, I have a new desktop and it’s working great!

But, you didn’t come here to read about why I got a new computer.

I’m sharing all this because it illustrates two things:

1. sometimes our distractions slowly become normalized and we don’t realize it
2. technology isn’t always super helpful

Yesterday, driving home from church I was listening to the Good Life Project podcast by Jonathan Fields. He was talking with Nilofer Merchant (who I had never heard of, but LOVED their conversation – although this is a common thing for me and this podcast).  You can find the podcast here (the part of the conversation I reference below it toward the end).

Nilofer talked with Carol Dweck, who is the source of the growth vs fixed mindset idea, as research for her (Nilofer’s) book and asked Carol “what’s the thing that’s going on in someone’s head for them to be able to have a growth mindset? …What’s that internal conversation?”

And Carol Dweck shared that “the conversation you’re having with yourself is ‘I trust myself enough, that if I fail at it, if I lose it, if I don’t get it right the first time, I trust myself enough to recover.'”

Nilofer rephrases it slight to be: How do you trust that even if it doesn’t work out that it’s okay?

This got me thinking about how in the self-help world or in the solopreneur space, there’s this belief or thought that’s encouraged that’s along the lines of “trust that everything is going to work out.”

And another belief/thought is to set intentions without being attached to them.

Carol Dweck’s observation that you need to trust yourself enough to trust you’ll recover is so enlightening to these two belief/thoughts that I’ve sometimes wrestled with over the years.

So, on this week’s Wednesday LIVE with Evie, we’re going to talk about that.

Check out the Facebook event here.

Update: You can watch this Wednesday LIVE with Evie here.

One of the things that used to feel like a black hole of time and energy, especially in my business, was my email.

Seriously, there was so much of it.

I regularly had 100 unread emails and most of those were weekly newsletters or updates from businesses or people I wanted to stay connected with.

But a lot of it was just stuff that I hadn’t sorted through yet and some were things that needed to be decided or done.

About once a month I would turn on the TV to a series or movie that I’d seen many times before and spend a couple hours on my laptop going through it. And I’d be frustrated by the things that I should have already responded to or interesting things I’d missed because I didn’t decide on it (or see it) when it arrived in my inbox.

This changed for me about three weeks ago. And I currently have under 20 emails in my inbox and a majority of them are from today or the long weekend.

Let’s talk about managing your email for this week’s (well, tomorrow’s) Wednesday LIVE with Evie.

I’ll share what I changed that allowed me to go from normally having over 100 emails to under 20.

Let me know your email frustrations and I’ll make sure to cover that tomorrow on the LIVE.

Check out the Facebook event here.

Update: You can watch this Wednesday LIVE with Evie here.