Alternately titled: The One Where Ross And Chandler Try To Quit The Gym
I had a realization this evening. I’m now putting more effort into social media than I’m getting out of it. Turns out it hasn’t brought me closer to anyone, really, and it’s stealing my attention. It hasn’t generated any money for expenses or savings for me or my family. I haven’t found enlightenment or inner calm. Mostly I feel stressed and overwhelmed at the end of the day, with just a hint of FOMO when I’m offline.
It’s whittled down my attention span to where it’s razor thin. The attention span issue plus my facial pain (which I honestly think is NOT related, despite the fact everyone is saying it’s stress-related, thank you very much) have taken a lot of the joy out of my life. I crave quiet and calm, yet it is almost unattainable. I don’t know how to do it…. how to quiet my brain.
We’re not even talking about the amount of time spent on sites like Facebook, because it’s truly not that much. The issue is the frequency. Every time the computer pauses to think about something, whether it’s doing a configure/make/make install, starting a VM, waiting for Outlook to finish doing whatever the fuck it does where it goes to lalaland for a few minutes, etc., I pop over to Facebook or Twitter or Reddit to see what’s new. Could be only 30 seconds, but it happens A LOT.
All my thrashing around, back and forth, consuming data streams like a coked up coke monkey, has to have a cost. So I’m doing a few things. 1) I said bye-bye on Facebook, and adjusted my notification settings so it wouldn’t email me to let me know all the excitement I’m missing. 2) I’m making more use of Instapaper and my iPad for longer-form media like interesting blog entries, NY Times articles and the like. I’ll check Instapaper only a few times a day, and try to do it outside of my office for a mental breath mint. Content suggestions welcome, please. 3) Unfollow some Twitter people who are just trying to drive traffic towards social media. Instead, use Twitter to find compelling long-form media. 4) I’d like to write here some more. This entry is disjointed, yes, but writing is a muscle that needs to be flexed, like some sort of.. flexing… thing. The nature of this beast requires attention and organizing of one’s thoughts, the very skills I’m trying to redevelop! What a happy coincidence. 5) Delete social media icons from browser toolbars. Simple one. Easily bypassed, but I’ll feel guilty the whole time I’m typing out my URL by hand.
Those are the first steps. I don’t have checkpoints or metrics or anything else to help me measure success or failure in this endeavor, so I’ll have to figure it out as I go. Any other suggestions are appreciated.