↓
 

The PolyBlog

My view from the lilypads

  • Home
  • Life
    • Family
    • Health and Spiritualism
    • Learning and Ideas
    • Computers
    • Experiences
    • Humour
    • Quotes
  • Reading, Writing and Watching
    • Book Reviews
    • Writing and Publishing
  • Goals
    • Posts about goals
    • #50by50 – Status of completion
    • PolyWogg’s Bucket List, updated for 2016
  • About Me
    • About ThePolyBlog.ca
    • Privacy Policy
    • Subscribe
    • Contact Me
    • WP colour choices
  • PolySites
    • ThePolyBlog.ca (Home)
    • PolyWogg.ca
    • AstroPontiac.ca

Tag Archives: social media

#50by50 #21 – A month of no social media

The PolyBlog
February 1 2018

As part of my 50by50 initiative, I wanted to do a month where I stepped away from the computer. I briefly toyed with the idea of no screens, but between work and a lot of digitally-enabled hobbies I have, that wasn’t very feasible. Nor am I a hysterical hipster worried that screens are going to destroy civilization.

For me, it is and always will be about balance. As much enjoyment as I get from some activities, some other activities are equally enjoyable but often not engaged in simply because old habits are just easier to follow.

I am not a giant social media person — I basically have only about 100 friends on FB, and when it goes above that, I start to get stressed that there is too much superficiality in my feeds. I also avoid drama in my feeds, so keeping it down to less than a hundred helps with that. On Twitter, it is mostly just about me posting review links. I don’t actively engage much. That’s it, that’s all. I’m not on Instagram or Pinterest, or Linked In, Google+, a bunch of others. FB and Twitter.

Now, I confess that while I had no fear of leaving Twits behind for a month, I was wondering about FB. Over the last few years, I have become a bit more isolated from friends and family, and could a month without FB break remaining ties? Would I feel MORE isolated after a month? It could happen, I suppose.

On January 1st, I posted a Happy New Year message, and then went radio silent. I share a few things a day sometimes on FB, so probably 100 shares fewer over the month. And no reading. I warned people I was doing it, just so nobody would notice that I went from active to ghost overnight and start asking, “Who was that masked man?” or worse, no one even noticing.

I broke the “fast” only twice, both intentionally. Some people message me through FB Messenger, and I didn’t treat that as verboten. For me, that was just an alternative to email, which was running strong throughout the month. So I did have 3-4 messages throughout the month that I responded to but without going into regular FB. I also went on Twitter once as I was looking for usage of a specific hashtag possibility and I wasn’t sure if people tagged the “noun” in question as “#noun” or #TheNoun. Wasn’t a big issue, just wanted to not wait until today to find out, and while I was on, I didn’t look for or at anything else. I got in, and got out.

Now, interestingly, I had three reactions throughout the month.

First, sure, I did feel a bit out of the loop on stuff. Enough that I would choose to return rather than just calling it quits on FB entirely. I like the interactions, some of the jokes and teasing. And heck, if my wife can use social media to teach about poop knives, who am I to say I shouldn’t be following along? (Okay, I missed some of you, I said it. Not my family though. Pfttt)

Second, I was surprised how much the social media options were integrated with some of my emails. I do subscribe to a bunch of feeds, some news-related or curations of interesting things, but a couple of them are almost all links to things being shared on social media. I put them all in a folder called “hiatus”. Similarly for when I was tagged in things, I put the notification in the hiatus folder to look at later. I relied on my wife to let me know if anything big or urgent cropped up anywhere.

Third, here is the interesting thing. Since I wasn’t spending time on FB or Twitter, I was far more productive elsewhere. I had lots of extra time. Now, I know some people think that I’m talking about time wasted just reading status updates, but that wasn’t the time suck. It was that because I wasn’t on FB, I wasn’t seeing the dozen or so articles per day that people shared, and clicking on them while I followed a funny cat video down a rabbit hole. Equally, I wasn’t clicking on LongReads (a curated feed) that shares lots of great longer articles — I usually enjoy 1-2 topics per week, minimum. And while I read fast, some of the articles could take 10 minutes for me to read.

FB is like a gateway drug. It wasn’t the drug itself, it was what it opened me up to afterwards. I never really thought of it before, but often after dinner, and we put Jacob to bed, I’ll get on my computer and rather than doing something productive, I would start perusing FB posts. 60 minutes later, or more, I was now tired enough not to want to do anything productive. So I would do a bit and then off to do something else (laundry, TV, whatever).

Without the distraction and rabbit holes, I would clear my email and be ready to be “productive” after about 10 minutes. Sometimes less. Which gave me a fair amount of other time to work on projects. I felt like I had a lot more productive time over the last month, just by elminating the gateway clicking on FB. Wasn’t quite what I expected.

Not only would I do it again, I feel like I may do it intentionally and consciously when I know I have some projects to get finished. I was able to focus a lot better, which is intuitive, but far more effectively in general than I would have expected.

Posted in Goals | Tagged 50by50, age, bucket list, digital, Facebook, goals, social media, Twitter | Leave a reply

#50by50 #02 – Who am I when I’m online?

The PolyBlog
June 24 2017

I mentioned in an earlier post that not all of my 50by50 commitments were going to be “bucket list type” things. Some of them, in some ways, are really just getting myself squared away. Deciding who I am, I suppose. And I’ve been struggling with one aspect of my identity for quite some time. Who am I when I’m online? Way back when I started engaging on the internet, I shared jokes and humour. I ran a trivia contest by email for a very long time. I wrote movie reviews and shared those. But I always wanted to get to … Continue reading →

Posted in Goals | Tagged 50by50, age, bucket list, goals, persona, social media | Leave a reply

Follow Me

Recent Posts

  • Tracking progress with adult merit badges?May 23, 2022
  • Not sure Darwin awards should apply to freak stormsMay 22, 2022
  • TV shows cancelled and renewed for 2022May 22, 2022
  • Planning for my new hobbyApril 24, 2022
  • The Conqueror Challenges and House RulesApril 20, 2022

Archives

Categories

© 1996-2021 - PolyWogg
↑