Taking time off social media can be complicated when you need it to sustain your work. When you’re self-employed, a freelancer or an entrepreneur, taking a break from social media can be essential to your mental health. Social media, especially checking obsessively has been linked to high anxiety as well as depression. Interpreting these studies has one meaning for the casual user but a completely different meaning for those of us who may feel pressured to spend 6 hours or more per day engaging with social media. Even with small sample sizes, these studies confirm something we feel intuitively. Social media can be draining when you discuss emotionally sensitive subjects that bear very real weight in your life offline.

Taking lengthy breaks from social media is important not just to our well-being but to cultivate the realization that your self-worth, self-esteem, and value isn’t tied to social media. Here are five of my favorite ways to prepare for a social media detox and enforce a social media detox without sacrificing productivity, my long-term goals and my short-term anxiety regarding engagement on my social media platforms.