246: I Am Officially AN INFLUENCER (I Quit! No, Seriously, I Do)

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Written By Melissa Klug

I’m practicing what I’m preaching.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey, pro organizers. It’s Melissa, and I’m doing this as a late-night, off-the-cuff “hey, how’s it going?”

I want to tell you about something I have going on. This is really big news because if you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’d be like, “Hmm… this is weird.” But you guys… I have officially become an influencer.

I know. It’s very exciting. I am absolutely thrilled to be joining the ranks of the influencer community, and I can’t wait to tell you what I am influencing—because it’s actually really ironic in the Alanis Morissette way of ironic, and lots of other ways too.

But I have done something this year that… well, let me just back up and say: I have a lot of really lofty goals this year. And I am acutely aware it’s already halfway through February, which is actually incredibly crazy. This last year definitely went very fast. It was a challenging year, but it went super fast. And this year it feels like, okay—I think it’s going to go fast too.

I have so many things I’m excited about and ready to do this year. But one of the things I really ran into last year is I let so many things slide—personally, professionally… you know, a lot of life happenings happening—and I let a lot of things slide.

As I was going into the end of the holiday season, when you start thinking about a new year and all that kind of stuff, I happened upon… and this is also going to be ironic when I tell the rest of the story… I happened upon a TikTok where the person was talking about this Japanese word that they love.

And I’m so excited—in about three months I’ll be back in Japan on a trip with Marie Kondo and company. So I love learning about Japanese language and culture and everything. And there’s this word: misogi. M-I-S-O-G-I.

The concept, if I’m breaking it down into the most simple distillation, is doing very hard things. Picking something you think you have less than a 50% chance of actually completing.

So I read a lot about this and I was like, oh… I really, really like this concept. And I really want to embrace that. So I’ve been quietly, privately thinking of that word.

And when I think about it, I have a lot of hard things to do this year. I have a lot of health goals. I’m not in the health condition that I want to be in. I have life goals, I have financial goals, I have all these things… and where am I spending my time?

And I found myself at the end of last year just feeling so disconnected. Like I was constantly searching for escape, or a dopamine rush, or any of those things that we get from these little, you know, seven-inch devices that we walk everywhere with and sleep with and all the things.

And I really started looking at this concept of misogi and what I wanted to do, and then trying to reconcile that with how much time a day I was spending on my phone… which is—I'm not going to bore you with my screen time stats—absolutely unbelievable. Especially around the holidays. Like, you know, you’re relaxing, you’re not really doing anything, but… whew. I was on that phone way too much.

So the point of this story is: I was thinking about where I am thoughtfully and unthoughtfully spending my time. Is “unthoughtful” a word? I don’t think it is. Anyway.

And what I realized is I would find myself… and part of it is I see my kids, right? My kids are digital natives. And I watch them when they flip through TikTok, when they flip through Instagram, and it almost looks like… and by the way, I would say this if they were standing right here—they definitely do not listen to this podcast… they kind of look like zombies. Just going through the motions and flipping. And they flip so fast. There’s no way your brain is absorbing any of that.

And I have seen it in myself and my husband.

We jokingly call my husband an iPad kid because we’ll be like, “Hey, hey Tim… Dad,” and he’s totally engrossed in dog videos on TikTok. Dog videos or sports—one of those two things.

So I really found myself thinking a lot about social media.

And I feel so strongly—and I have preached this from the very beginning, you know, five, six, almost six years ago when I started here—I have preached this nonstop: you do not need to have any social media at all to be an organizer. You can have zero and you can have a thriving organizing business.

And I believe that so sincerely.

But I was finding myself… it’s not that I wasn’t practicing what I’m preaching, because I wasn’t posting on social media. If you go to either my Home By Eleven or my Pro Organizer Studio social media, I haven’t posted there in a while. But I was consuming so much content.

And here’s what was happening to me:

In addition to really just losing a lot of time during the day—and when I say a lot of time, I mean hours—those hours were not coming from work time. Those hours, for me, were coming from, “I should be asleep because I am tired. I need to wake up early tomorrow. I have a taxing day tomorrow. I’m physically tired from a job today,” whatever that looks like.

I found myself in that situation where… there was a phrase I heard during the really dark early days of the pandemic, and it was called “revenge bedtime procrastination.”

It’s the concept of: my days aren’t really my own anymore. So at night, when I don’t have home or work responsibilities, I’m just going to be on my phone for hours… because I didn’t really get to do what I wanted to do today.

And so I’ve embraced that phrase, and I recognize when I’m doing it—revenge bedtime procrastination. It’s very real.

Instead of doing the things I wanted to do for my health, I would be scrolling TikTok for hours. And I would look and be like, oh my gosh, it’s 12:30 in the morning and I really need to go to bed. I was wasting so much of my life on it.

So when I bring all these things together—these ramblings—I really landed on something and said: okay, what would be one of the hardest things I could do this year?

Cabri and I had recorded a podcast in December—it was like an end-of-year podcast—and I said something to her about, “I don’t know… I might take a break from social media.” And she says in the podcast, “Oh my gosh, when you said that, it made me nervous.” Like, she was nervous that I was considering giving up social media… because this is the world we live in, right? You go, “Oh my gosh, I would miss all the things.”

So I was thinking about all of it, and the concept of misogi, and I said: okay. On January 1st, I am going to delete Instagram, Facebook, TikTok—anything that I find addictive in any way—any social media that I find addictive. I am deleting it from my phone.

Now in the case of Instagram and TikTok, if someone sends me a TikTok or Instagram link on my phone, I cannot play it on my phone because I do not have the apps. And that was one of the first things I thought of: okay, in addition to, you know… there are people I like to keep up with on these platforms—people I actually know, and people I don’t—so I’m going to miss things.

My second thought was my kids.

All four of us in our family love to exchange funny things. During the day, it’s actually a fun way for me to connect with my kids. So I was like, okay… I still have to find a way to watch things if the kids send me something, because that’s a way of interacting with them and chatting about the things that are fun or important to them.

And then I had the bigger question: what am I going to do when I’m bored?

Or—this is much, much more probable—what am I going to do when I’m avoiding the other things I don’t want to do?

Because I could find a thousand reasons in a day to be like, “Oh, I worked for a solid 10 minutes. I returned three emails. I’m going to treat myself with a few TikToks,” and pretty soon you’re down a rabbit hole.

Another thing I found myself doing last year a lot: I would feel pressure.

When I was watching Reels or TikTok… you know, the algorithm is algorithmic. It knows what you want to see, and it also knows what will hit you in a way that makes you interact more.

So I would have business things show up and I’d think, “Oh gosh, there’s just another thing I’m not doing for my business.” Or “I’ve got to make sure all the organizers I talk to know about X, Y, and Z.” Or “Oh my gosh, why am I not thinking about starting a brand new business? Why don’t I start three more businesses?”

There was a lot of pressure.

And then personally, I’d feel pressure too—like, “Oh, I’m not doing the things. I’m not making a full gourmet dinner every night. I’m not brewing my own gin in the basement. I’m not growing my own vegetables.” Like, “Oh, you bought Brussels sprouts from the store? I grow mine in my backyard.”

It was constant: you should, you should, you should.

And listen—there are some things that are lovely. TikTok is how I found out about the concept of misogi. There are absolutely wonderful things on all these platforms.

But if I do the net-net… if I do the ROI… is the 1% or 5% or 10% of really great things worth the other 90% of more toxic, unhelpful things?

So I said: I am deleting everything January 1st. And I did. I deleted it after midnight, right after the ball dropped, and I said, okay—we’re doing this.

And I did not give myself a “Well, New Year’s Day doesn’t really count.” Nope. They were gone.

Now, you know the misogi concept is to give yourself something you have a 50% chance or less of finishing… and I’ll be honest: I thought I was going to cave right away.

Because do you know what I’ve caved on before? Screen time limits. Timers. I got the Brick—I talked about it in the podcast in December—and I did end up getting the Brick. It’s useless, by the way. Do not buy it. And if someone wants mine, just let me know.

But I’ve been able to run through all those things because they’re all super easy to get around. Screen time limit? You just click off. Rescind screen time for the rest of the day… and the rest of the day might be 8:00 in the morning, and you’ve already used your screen time by 8:00 in the morning, and you’re like, “Nope, whatever. I have a lot of hours till midnight.”

So I realized: I had to remove the thing from in front of me.

I listened to an audiobook last year about anxiety—because so many kids have it, so many of our clients have it, so many of us have it. I can be a very high-anxiety person, and I try really hard not to let it get in the way… but it does, right?

And one of the things they talked about was habit development as it relates to anxiety. And they had this phrase from the field of addiction medicine: “continued use despite adverse consequences.”

I’m going to keep doing this thing even though it does something bad for me.

And honestly, I really thought I wouldn’t be able to do this. I thought I would cave like I do to a lot of things—continued use despite adverse consequences.

Well… it is February 18th at 9:39 PM Central time when I’m recording this.

And the only thing I still do on any social media is: I do have active Facebook groups for some of the communities I run at Pro Organizer Studio. We have absolutely lovely Facebook groups where people are helping each other with their organizing businesses.

I do log onto that every day, but I have a filter on my computer where Facebook goes directly to that group. I just look at what’s in the group, and then I’m out.

Other than that? Nothing is on my phone. No Instagram, no TikTok, no Facebook.

I quit LinkedIn altogether. I hate LinkedIn, but that’s another podcast for another time.

In addition to my groups, if my kids send me a TikTok, I will watch the one TikTok on my laptop. I will comment on it, and then I will go back.

I feel like this is a fine part of a rule break for me because it does not involve scrolling. It is only on my laptop, so it’s a completely finite thing… and it’s my kids.

All of this has been off my phone for six weeks.

And when I tell you I have not one single ounce of regret… I have not felt in any way like I’m missing out on anything.

It has been very positive for my mental health. It has really helped with that.

I am sleeping at a normal time. That’s part of my health routine—I’m really devoting time and energy to sleep as much as possible. Maybe not tonight. Tonight may not be a great example of that, but…

I am reading more. I have already finished so many books this year. I keep track of my books—I’m a big reader—and I will for sure surpass my 2025 reading by the month of March because I’m devoting a lot more time to reading.

And I’ve got a lot of my time back.

And listen… I’m sure there are things I’m missing. I’m sure there are happy things I’m missing. I’m sure there are pieces of news I’m missing—about friends, family, bigger news.

Obviously I stay informed. I still have a news app I go to so I know what’s going on in the world. But I’m also not getting my news from TikTok. I’m getting my news from sources that I feel help me understand the full story of all the things going on in our world.

And I just really can’t possibly give you more encouragement if this is something you have been considering.

I’m telling you: do it.

I’m so glad I did.

And I also have decided I don’t have an end point.

I think to truly embrace misogi, I would absolutely like to see if I could do this for all of 2026.

I’m also giving myself the luxury to say: hey, I’m allowed to change my mind.

If I say, “Hey, I did it for the first three months of the year, and I’m going to let myself scroll a little bit on the weekend,” I will feel free to do that.

But right now, I don’t feel any particular excitement or compulsion about that.

And that’s weird… and I’m excited about that too.

I’m really proud.

And that sounds absolutely ludicrous—like, “I’m so proud that I gave up social media.” But at the beginning of this I said, “Hey guys, I have big news… I’m an influencer now.”

Because one of the funniest things that has come out of this is: I have told some of my really good friends—some in organizing and some just in my personal, non-organizing life—and I’ve told lots and lots of people that I’ve done this.

And now I have several people that I have evangelized—slash converted—to the “give up social media” side.

I was joking the other day: there were two people who told me within the space of about two days that they had taken my lead and deleted all their social media from their phones.

And I was like, “Oh my gosh, you guys… I’m an influencer.” Finally. I’m an influencer.

To get people off of the influencing platforms—which maybe is only funny to me, but it is funny to me.

So I just want to encourage you: if this is something you’ve been considering, I cannot tell you how many times, in the course of my coaching career, people have this… FOMO isn’t really the word, but fear definitely is.

Fear of what might happen if they don’t post on social media.

Well, I’ve got news for you: I haven’t posted on Home By Eleven—my organizing Instagram—in months. Legitimately, I can’t even remember the last time. It was probably around How To Summit, so… six months or whatever.

And I’m still getting inquiries.

By the way, I’m not even taking organizing clients right now, and I’m still getting inquiries almost every single day.

I have not posted on Pro Organizer Studio social media, and I’m still getting clients in our communities almost every single day.

You just don’t need it as much as you might think you do.

Now, in the upcoming weeks, if you feel particularly compelled, I will tell you: there will be some more content on Pro Organizer Studio because Cabri does love social media, and she is going to be posting some things.

So you’ll see some things out there. Cabri will definitely, for sure, be happy to respond to you if you want to DM.

But if you’re feeling like you want to take a little break—and you’d love to join me—I’m happy to be an accountability partner for you.

You can email me at hello@proorganizerstudio.com, and I would be absolutely thrilled to welcome you to the community.

And I would like to influence you… to quit some social.

So give it a try. I cannot more highly recommend it.

All right, that’s your little minisode. I’ll be back probably early next week with some fun stuff.

I hope you have an absolutely wonderful evening, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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Melissa Klug
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