Want to unclog your life? – A Lesson from the CEO and co-founder of Superdry

Imagine what life would be like if we never received or responded to an email, if we didn’t face the demands of Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, SLACK, Twitter, Whatsapp et al? How much more time would you have in your day for creative thinking, innovation and focus on what’s really important?

I was reading about Julian Dunkerton (co-founder of Superdry) in the Sunday Times this week and this quote struck me:

“I live, breathe and wear Superdry and I am very focused. Part of that discipline is not having a Smartphone. I watch other people clog up their day with emails and fill their heads with thoughts they don’t need but I don’t want any distractions because it affects my ability to do my job. So I keep it simple. Other people do my emails.”

Now you see why this is an ironic post! It’s made me think. Perhaps I could reduce my time on line by 50% if I took more of a Julian Dunkerton approach to email. Perhaps, having email free days (social media free weeks) will give me the space to accelerate my creativity and think about my business differently?

I’m certainly going to use rules and alerts more effectively (and politely request those who are clagging up my inbox by copying in ‘everyone’ in their address box, not to copy me into their round robins unless they have both a relevance and action for me to take).

I’ll leave you all to consider whether you can take control of the distractions that are limiting your focus, creativity and productivity in your day (and if that includes asking me to remove you from my mailing list, no offence will be taken!)

Have a clutter free and super productive day one and all.