Tomorrow I will end a 30 day social media fast.
I got a bit overwhelmed and depressed by some comments and discussions that I was drawn into and aired it with my buddies at Aptitud. 2 minutes later 3 of us decided to go on a fast.
I uninstalled all my social media apps and removed the shortcuts to the sites. The first thing was to make it harder to use it. I was in real deep, and even felt a bit stressed that if I didn’t read my stream the first thing in the morning. The first couple of days it was pretty close that I got back in a couple of times. I realized that if I was waiting for a slow page (ALL pages when in Indonesia) I often switched over to Twitter to catch up…. And got stuck.
Full disclosure: I have been tweeting pictures from the @kanbanInAction account just to promote the book. And yesterday I was on facebook for my work, gathering examples of social media in the Salvation Army.
After about 5 days I forgot all about it and since then it just been a joy. I read a fictional book for the first time in several years. This has not only to do with not being on social media, but it gave some space and room.
In this post I will just list the things I have missed, not missed and the reasons for me taking it up again…
Missed
I missed the quick check ins or possibilities to ask people questions, like “Hey @gblock, does ScriptCS supports dynamic yet?”
I missed the overview and flow of information that gives me a kind of news digest on what’s happening. Like what are people talking about around agile? Have Koa picked up yet in the main stream community?
Mostly I’ve missed talking to people. How is Hugo doing? Did Emma succeed with her plans? Have Tobbe delivered that speech he was working with? Things like that. I missed talking with people.
Not missed
I don’t miss the stress about checking my twitter stream. I have now decided to do that 3 times a day. 20 minutes max when I get into the office, after lunch and when I get home. I will not install any apps to check social media for me, but will have to go through the “hassle” of opening a browser.
I don’t miss the stress of tweeting. “oh, this would make a great tweet”. I will not tweet that anymore. My day to day life simple is not that interesting. I think.
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| From Know You Meme |
I don’t miss the anxiety of publishing things. “Dare I publish this?”, “Wonder what X would answer to this tweet”. Those thoughts still make me sweat actually. I will not think about that. Any hard comments will go unregarded from now. Haters gonna hate.
Go back
I will go back using social media (twitter foremost, facebook sparsely). Mostly because that’s a good way to keep in touch with friends and family on the other side of the globe.
But I will try to change my usage a bit. In the end I was mostly talking TO people and not WITH people. It not really the same thing. I miss talking with people.
Oh, let’s not be a total hypocrite, I miss to be able to draw some more traffic to my blog as well :). Yes, I’m vain in that way. No apologies
See you other there. Now more carefully.