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Testing How To Become Great

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Social Media Control

Social Media
Opportunity – limit time on social media to gain mental clarity and have more time for valuable tasks.

Everyone uses Social Media.

FUN fact, according to brandwatch.com, there are over 2 Billion people who use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You’re on Social Media. Advertisers know that. On average, advertisers earmark 20% of their budget for social media and social media companies earned $8.3 Billion from advertisers in 2015.

Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin; I spend HOURS of my day looking at “stuff”.  This “stuff” largely isn’t important and I don’t remember the vast majority of what I review.  I find myself habitually going to social media apps when I have a moment of free time. Why? I have not idea. What am I looking for? I’m not sure.  What value am I bringing to my life? Ah….. hmm…… Yike. I’m not sure!
Goal
The goal of this test was to limit social media to a short window each day to check notifications should something material come up.  One of the ways I use social media is to keep in touch with friends all over the world.  I didn’t want to “go off the grid” because I do enjoy keeping up with my friends. However, if I limit my use of social media to once a day, I will still be gaining a good amount of time back in my life! How much time? Let’s see.

I’m awake for roughly 16 hours a day. If I gain an hour back, that is a increase of over 6% of time back. However, I also have a more focused 16 hours since I will be eliminating the distraction of social media which I consistently checked throughout the day.

If you can get 6% of your day back, what would you do?
If you could be more effective with your time, what could you accomplish?

Now, let me be clear (Obama voice). I don’t think social media is “bad”.  However, it doesn’t really add anything “good” to my life.  I do enjoy keeping up with my friends and posting pictures of my beautiful wife and kids, which I will still do during the time frame that I will be using Social Media.
The problem is: I check it CONSTANTLY out of habit and it doesn’t help me.  Here are some of the reasons why I’m excited about this test.
I noticed Social Media is distracting me from:
  1. Work
  2. Family time
  3. Driving (yikes.. I know)
  4. Study Time
  5. Having a Positive Mental Attitude (we all have those friends that only post the worst things.. wait.. why do we still have them as our friends? hmmm)

So, what am I going to do?

Rules:
1. Delete Apps from my iPhone.  This doesn’t delete my accounts, it just makes it more involved to check my social media.  If it takes me 30 extra seconds to log in via the browser method, I will have an opportunity to stop and notice that my habitual behavoir is starting to take over.
2. Only check social media notifications during lunch time.  Lunch time is often “me time” where I take a moment and think, study, read news, etc. It takes me less than 5 minutes to check my notifications.  I’m doing this just to see if a friend has reached out to me, in which I will have the opportunity to respond and not be labeled as an ignoring jerk. (hehe)
3.  I will test this for two weeks to see if I have gained more mental clarity and time for other valuable tasks.
Check back to two weeks to hear my feedback of this test.  Interested in joining me? Send me a note via the contact form on how this test went for you!

8/3/2016 – Update

This test was harder than I’d like to admit. I found myself trying to get on Facebook/Instagram out of habit.  I noticed that the most critical time for me to focus was the morning. I fought to honor this time and eliminate any social media usage.  It certainly made my mornings more productive and allowed me to focus on the task at hand.

Overall, I believe this was a very useful test and I’ll continue to limit social media usage during the day. It made me more productive and I didn’t miss anything by not reviewing Facebook/Instagram.  Sure, my wife would inform me of something funny that was posted or some news the broke during the day. However, overall, I didn’t miss anything material and I didn’t find one problem with limiting Social Media.

Our world is dominated by distractions like never before. It’s important to refocus our minds on what has the most impact on our days.  I found that Social Media doesn’t have a large impact on my day, unless I spend too much time using Social Media. Then, the impact can be negative due to the time loss that should be devoted to important tasks.

I hope this post has challenged you. Social Media isn’t “bad”, however, I suspect that we all could pull back the time spent on Social Media.  If we invest that time into more important tasks, I believe we all can take a step in a direction that will bring us more happiness and allow us to achieve more.
Contact me on Twitter or via the form on this site. Let me know how it goes for you.

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