Firstly, this isn’t an advertorial, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while and finally acted upon. Secondly, this is purely a subjective piece – not based on actual scientific research!
I finally took action. Checking multiple different channels of social media for… pretty much pointless information. This was clogging up my time and therefore any chance of me increasing productivity. Time is precious, time is money, time is invaluable.
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”
William Penn
“Lost time is never found again.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”
Theophrastus
After firstly seeing how much time one can drain into social media, and secondly with zero gain, I decided to take the drastic action and delete my accounts. And let me make it clear – delete not deactivate. I’m out for good!
Now you might be wondering why. Surely social media isn’t that bad, right? A quick check here and there to see what’s going on can’t be that harmful? Well, let’s check that.
My commute to work is approximately 40 minutes door to door. At least 25 minutes of that is spent on the train, where I’ll usually use my smartphone to check all sorts. Work email, other notifications from apps, news and sports, my work calendar, and of course up until now, social media. In fact, the large majority of that 25 minutes would end up going to social media. 25 minutes in a day? Pff, that’s not that bad, right?
What about the notifications during the day? On your desktop or mobile device? What about the random browsing during lunch time? What about during evenings when you could be spending time with family and friends or otherwise be productive in so many other ways?
From purely a time perspective, social media does add up. We shouldn’t only think about time however, we should also think about the effect this would probably have on our brains.
I’m certainly no neuroscientist, however I’m pretty sure habitual behaviours lead to unstimulated brain activity. What do I mean by that? Well, think about it – when you’re doing a mundane task, what are you actually thinking about? Usually random other things, often creative, as your brain has your body on autopilot while it’s free to wonder about. The best example of this is when you shower. Your body is on complete autopilot, doing something you’ve done hundreds of times before, while your brain is left to explore. Quite often, some of my most creative thinking is done in the shower simply due to this. Having been a developer in my career, I would be lying if I said I had never solved a problem in the shower and had a eureka moment!
Now think about the flip side. More of our time is being spent on social media, where we are soaking up mundane information. Our brain is neither fully engaged in creative thinking, nor on autopilot mode. We are somewhat in between second and third gear, limiting ourselves to push forwards.
So what do I do with my free time? And why have I explicitly mentioned LinkedIn in my title?
Having washed my hands free of stuff like Facebook, I now have so much free time to read and learn. I read articles on Leadership, Technology, and general going-ons in the industry. I’m able to apply theory in hypothetical situations in my mind. I soak up valuable information which will be useful to me in both short and long term.
LinkedIn particularly comes to mind with their Pulse section, something many people aren’t aware of or use very little. Pulse is a standalone app which collates articles based on people you follow, your influencers, groups, etc. This makes a great list of articles to read on a daily basis. It also collates relevant industry news. It was actually through Pulse that I first learnt about Alphabet’s formation (Google’s parent company).
A more general question to leave you on, rather than being focused on social media, would be: what do you do with your time? Are you making the most of it?
Just as an added note: I’ve posted this article as a pure first draft without any edits.