Not too long ago, I took a break from social media for two reasons (one no more important than the other):

  1. to try to break the habit of compulsively checking social networks whenever I was stuck on a problem,
  2. to cut back on “chatter” during the day.

(I looked through my previous posts to see if I talked about it at length but couldn’t find it.)

https://twitter.com/tommcfarlin/status/880912831922753536

Anyway, it’s something I’ve decided to do again, although this time I have a few different reasons. Maybe it’s social media breaks are something I’ll do a more on the regular, maybe not. I can’t know that right now.

We’ll see in a month.

Nonetheless, this time I thought it worth sharing a little bit more behind the reasons why if for no other reason to make sure I have it documented more so than I did last time.

My Social Media Breaks

When looking to draft up this post, there were a handful of things I wanted to cover that I eventually narrowed down to three main points.

So I thought I’d cover them here and chat about the rest if the time ever arises.

“It’s Not You; It’s Me”

A positive thing to note is that I’ve meant a lot of really got people via social media.

Some of them I’ve had the pleasure of meeting offline, some of them I’ve had the chance to work with (or work for), and others I’m happy simply to chat with on a day-to-day (or week-to-week) basis.

But the downside of it is that it can quickly cut into productivity. Usually, it’s not too big of a problem, but there are also times where I want to head off any potential problems that can impact work.

And that’s one of those times.

Replace Tweets with Something Else

As previously mentioned, it can be one of those things that quickly becomes a habit rather more so than something valuable. I don’t want that particular balance.

But what I mean is that I get stuck on a problem, or I get bored waiting for something, so I end up checking social-something-or-another rather than doing something that could be a bit more productive.

Social Media Breaks: Catch-Up on Pocket

Maybe I could catch up on an article or two in Pocket. Maybe I can respond to a backlog of comments I have on this blog 🙂, maybe I can use the time to dig a little deeper into a concept I’ve wanted to read about, maybe I can spend some time reading a few pages in one of the stacks of books I have.

There are so many things I have in a notebook that I’d love to go through and read or study if I just had the time. So why not replace one thing I’m doing to buy that time?

Business, Projects, Personal

There are both things professional and personal I want to focus on for the next month. Sometimes people read these things as if something is wrong (and sometimes it’s true and commend those willing to blog about that).

For me, though, there’s nothing to share more than:

  • There are things about Pressware I’m looking to focus on both at a business-level and at a project-level,
  • There are things regarding this blog that I want to focus on (I talked about this a little bit in last month’s newsletter),
  • And there are things on a personal level I want to focus on partially related to fitness and partially related to other things (family, hobbies, other interests, etc.).

I love what I do, but one of the things that permeate the online culture is how much time we can spend online (be it on our computer or our phones).

Social Media Breaks: Projects - Personal and Professional

And I’m not knocking it. But again, there are things I think I can do to help make sure I’m doing the best work I can during the working hours.

Right now, I’m at a point where I need to make sure I’m taking time offline to focus on those things so I can do my best work when I am on online.

I don’t even know if that makes sense. But that’s what it is.

What’s July Going To Look Like?

So for the month of July, what’s Twitter and Instagram – the two social networks I use – going to look like for the month of July?

  • Instagram is going to be silent. I won’t be checking it, I don’t have it installed, and I’ve no email notifications setup for it (if there are even options for that).
  • Twitter is going to be mostly silent. I still use it to share things from this blog largely because it tends to be related to things I’m working on, people don’t use RSS like they used to, and because people can shoot me notes via comments or email.

Outside of that, I’ve no apps installed on my computer or my phone. I goal is to maintain radio silence while I focus on other things. Of course, if you wanna chat, shoot me an email or something like that.

I’m not offline. I’m just not socially networking. Or networking socially. Or whatever the right terminology is. 😏