Reclaiming my time
2026 is the year of separating my time, attention, and data away from larger platforms, ensuring I'm not locked in anywhere as much as possible, and learning some new fun tools along the way.
Somewhat like Maxine Waters in that 2017 hearing, I’m realizing that my attention and my data are finite resources. I’ve always known this, but in the last year it really seems to be more clear with the amount of content wrangling I’ve been doing.
When I began my career, there were so many tools, ways to work, things to sign up and learn from. Now twenty years in, I’m drowning in possibilities and a bad habit of signing up for newsletters in the hopes it’ll make me a better person by it hitting my inbox. Things I never read but clog up my mental time in so many ways.
I am starting to equate them to the optimistic purchases I used to make at the grocery store that would end up sitting in the back of the fridge until they just wilt away.
It’s not the kale’s fault. It’s not really even the newsletter, either. It’s me wanting to solve a larger complex issue in one easy transaction without putting in the effort.
I’m no longer content to give away information, to be stalled by unfocused time, or skimming social media. I still do it, but I want to move away from so much of it.
I need to reclaim my time.
I know this won’t be an easy journey, the world is setup for me to pay into the attention economy with clicks. But if I’m to get to my goal of building an economy of impact through clearer understanding of the value I (and others) bring to this world, I have to start with some audits of my time and attention.
I started to put together a personal and business audit to reclaim my attention, my time, and most importantly, the ‘keys’ to my own information.
These are my slow, methodical moves toward a more sovereign self.
Here are the questions I’m asking myself, and of my business:
Phase 1: The Personal Audit (Cognitive & Identity)
Goal: Reclaim attention and keys. Use my personal time to build more skills, focus on what I want, and reduce stress.
Identity Decoupling: List every critical service (banking, health, government) with “Sign in with Google/LinkedIn/Facebook.” This will make it much easier if I decide to move away from these platforms or get locked out of them.
Algorithm Fasting: Audit my default news sources and other information. Am I seeing what I chose, or what a feed chose for me? Does it serve me, truly?
Sovereign Moves:
Use RSS Readers (like Feedly) or direct Substack subscriptions to pull information, rather than having it pushed to via a social feed that leads to doomscrolling. Ground News is a really great one as well that Shayne uses often. I’ve come to realize my inboxes are a wealth of research available to me, I just have to use it correctly.
Noise reduction audit: How much of the email that I get do I actually read or do anything with? How much of it do I want to be aware of but not go into a deep dive on?
Use Gemini or another tool to audit unread emails in the morning for a summary, assess what you really care about them, and if you see a pattern of disinterest, unsubscribe from that source. I’ve been doing this for about a week personally and for my business, and it’s been really helpful. Here’s my prompt: Access my emails in Gmail from the last 24 hours (read or unread) and email me a digest of them all. Suggest items to unsubscribe from, and any emails that in particular that are pushing for purchasing/sales vs. information.
Biometric & Key Custody: Check if my “recovery codes” for 2FA are stored in a cloud I might get locked out of.
Sovereign Move: Print recovery codes and store them in a physical safe. If I lose the cloud, I shouldn’t lose my whole life.
Phase 2: The Business Audit (Operational & Data)
Goal: Ensure the business survives a ‘de-platforming’ or a major vendor outage, as well as has the adaptability to move from systems based on our values.
1. The “Off-Switch” Test
Critical Path Inventory: If Microsoft/Google/AWS shut down our account today, how long could our business operate? For us, we’d be DOA immediately, and we’re working to fix that. We’ve moved our consulting website to Infomaniak, onto European soil, and will work on moving away from Google Suite over time to their KSuite offering.
Data Portability: Audit SaaS tools (CRMs, Project Management). Do they have an “Export All” button that produces usable files (CSV/JSON), or is the data trapped in their proprietary format? I’m starting to investigate this now, as well as the potential of having a CRM and Project backup setup between more than one tool, both to learn new tools and keep skills fresh on data mapping, migration, and interconnection. I don’t want to lock myself into one system and not use it as a chance to learn others.
2. Data Geography & Legal Reach
Jurisdiction Mapping: Where is our customer data physically? (e.g., Is our EU customer data on a US-owned server subject to the CLOUD Act?) We are moving things to the EU, slowly, as we reassess our setups.
It’s truly time to nerd, and I love it.
This is just the beginning of a long journey to diversify my personal and business focus, tech usage, and safety. I’m sure I’ll be talking about this more as I dig in and try different tools.
As we build our ideas away from what we’ve ‘grown up’ seeing in terms of tech, I have to imagine this will get more interesting and only expand my knowledge of tools, ideas, and ways to make things work. I started my career with startups diving deep into U.S.-built tools as a near-default, and now that I’m exploring outside of that realm, there’s an interesting wealth of options that I didn’t even realize.
This major exercise isn’t just for data and security reasons, but to open up my mind and understand the possibilities.
It’s amazing how much being ‘born’ into U.S. tech has stifled my ability to look elsewhere and consider other options.
Here’s our roadmap so far, and how much we will be saving.
We’re investigating new tools not just for security, consolidation, and cost savings, but also considering what aligns with our values and our drive for transparency.
We’re also considering Open Source models and companies that align or aspire to be teal organizations, S3 (Sociocracy 3.0), and/or are members or follow the values of Openorg.
Heartfelt sidenote: This will not be a once-and-done thing, but an ongoing project to align ourselves personally and professionally with tech, products, and communities that help us grow as humans.
Cloud hosting and website: Wix to Infomaniak - saving about 200/year
Email & Office: Google Workspace to KSuite - once implemented will save about 300/yr. Will likely keep some version of Google email since professional and personal sharing of GSuite files is the norm. But wherever we can move off of Google, we will.
Graphic Design: Canva to (perhaps) Penpot - 100/yr - moving from Canva to be able to have more Figma-like experience between development/marketing/product
CRM/Marketing: Hubspot (free) to ?? - Investigating Attio next. Still unsure here as I’m a true fan of Hubspot and will probably always have an account to keep skills up.
Browser: Chrome to Vivaldi - no cost difference, but Vivaldi is really cool.
Relational Database/Project Management: Airtable to SeaTable or Baserow - still considering this one - no real cost savings, but considering Open Source alternatives has opened up my mind to possibilities. Also, again I might pump a source of truth to another system and back to keep my migration skills up and be able to say ‘yes I can use Notion/ClickUp/whatever is the new latest thing’.
Keeping up with the latest is much easier than one might imagine
For a professed ‘tool nerd’, these are really fun and interesting times. I’ve been having a blast exploring the EU Tech Map to find European replacements. I used to spend hours on the weekend using Zapier or IFTTT’s available integrations lists to just see what all tools are available in certain categories to keep up. Even knowing what tools exist in a category like Project Management is amazingly helpful in conversations.
Let me know if you are doing the same. I’d love to nerd with you!
If you are replacing tech or considering diversifying your personal or business tech stack, honing your focus, and/or reclaiming your time, I’d love to hear what you are considering, how you are approaching the migration, and the favorite tools you’ve found so far.
And if you feel stuck and don’t know where to start, I’d be happy to get on a call or in DMs and help you figure out the best place to start.