Date Archives

June 2020

Your Phone is Holding You Back

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As you may have seen, I don’t like myself. What I mean by that is as I write this, I have a full-time job, run a Digital Agency, volunteer at the Hyve International startup, and a Youth Leader at my local church. With everything and sometimes everyone pulling me in every direction except towards a go-kart track, I have needed to take multiple steps to stay as productive as humanly possible. I have shared several videos on staying productive which I will link below, but I wanted to share a couple of useful steps you can do on your phone (hopefully an iPhone) to stay productive right now. Let’s get to it:

  1. Multiple app screens. Assuming you are not the type of person who has ordered your icons based on the colour of the app icons or, worse still, alphabetically, you have probably organised them by the web browser, Instagram, settings, music…and everything else is somewhere on there, sometimes in folders. Although it is a popular method, it isn’t the most efficient. Instead, separate your home screens and keep the apps you need in one place. This is my current home screen. The first page is my most frequent personal apps, the second page are my business apps, then my apps I use for church, followed by everything else. This does more for me than adding an extra scroll, it allows for better separation between modes when I am working. Am I doing Ark stuff, or Youth Leader stuff? And whichever it is, I can swipe accordingly. (If you want to know any more about my apps, please message me. I will happily create an in-depth keynote presentation on why you should also use that app.
  1. Actionable Notifications. I have excellent news for you. 35 people just liked your last Instagram post. But I am going to tell you individually at random times, 35 times. That’s what you want, right? Well usually it’s a no, but you never really got round to changing it, and I don’t blame you. But on the path to productivity central, you should. Consider which apps actually need your attention. I am an avid Reddit user, but there is no real reason why Reddit should ever need to notify me of anything. Turn of all notifications on apps that, don’t really need your attention. On all the other apps that you actually use more regularly, only turn on notifications that you can, or should do something about. I am not entirely fussed when one of my friends is going live on Instagram. Maybe I should be, but I am really not. I am more fussed when they send me a direct message. So I have set up my notifications accordingly. I only receive notifications on things that I want to and can do something about.
  1. Widgets. I love this one because it is a combination of both efficiency and laziness, the best combination possible. Seeing your plan for the day, the weather, your tasks for the day, and others will allow you to see relevant at a glance, without opening up any apps. A gentle warning though: remember, these are purely short, relevant information for your day. There can be a desire to add additional information that isn’t crucial or more information on the widgets that you already have. My general rule is, due tomorrow, view tomorrow.
  1. Wallpaper. Consider changing your wallpaper to something that inspires you. It could be a goal you plan to achieve, a lifestyle you want to live, a place you want to live or even a single words of inspiration. Mine, for example, is a custom-built go-kart. Or a picture of my kids, depending on who’s reading this. Also, consider changing your wallpaper regularly, so it doesn’t become monotonous and continues to have a similar impact to when you first chose it.

So there you have it, Lyndon’s List on how you can be more productive on your phone right now. As always, there are many other steps you can take, but these are some of the important ones I would recommend.

Buying isn’t enough – Support Black Owned Business

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Black Lives Matters. And with this emphasis has come a renewed focus on Black Owned Business (BOB). We are generating more orders and opened more dialogue with customers than any other organic method. But buying Black is only the tip of the iceberg. BOB for clothing or food will be continually in demand. But is the BOB makes wedding dresses or kitchen utensils, you will probably (or at least hopefully) not need these products for sometime. Purchasing is a great first step, but there is more we need from you to encourage others to purchase Black.

  • Leave Reviews. It is great that you have found a BOB because of your local network on social media. Even better, you have shared that business with your circle of influence. But what about the people outside of that network. How will they know about your purchase and the experience you have received. Luckily, that solution already exists, it’s called a review. You leaving a review allows other potential buyers to gain an inside look about their purchase and helps with making that final decision of purchasing from us. If you write a detailed review of the product or service, that will last much longer and build a bigger impact on future purchaser decisions. The best platforms to leave a review are their business profile on Google, their Facebook Page or on their TrustPilot account should they have one.
  • Leave feedback. Supporting Black Owned is incredible and we thank you for purchasing from us. Now allow us to understand, what did you like? What did you not like? What can we do to improve? What did you love? Tell us the impact our product or service has had on your life. You may have experienced purchasing from somewhere else before us and have valuable insight into the different type of experience you received. This feedback will allow us to improve our service, build a better business, or even provide that extra encouragement knowing that someone, somewhere’s life has been impacted for the better. Make the feedback clear and specific so we can take action and build an even better business.
  • Social Media Engagement. In order to stay relevant, we constantly creating social media content. Whether it be on Facebook to Twitter, LinkedIn to even TikTok, we are always creating something. And these posts often go through writes and rewrites, design changes, proofreaders, scheduling apps and more; It takes a lot of work and effort to create all this content. A really simple method of recognition is simply to follow us and engage one of our posts. A comment that you loved the post or even as simple as an emoji demonstrates acknowledgement of our time and effort.

Let me go back and say thank you for buying from BOBs, and let these ideas in no way detract from that. But following these steps will support us that one step further and become the industry leaders in our respective fields.