Seeking Balance: The Friday-Only Social Media Plan

In the past few months, I’ve been blogging a lot about my relationship with social media and figuring out how to manage distractions. Really, it’s been a topic on my mind for years, and I’ve come at it in a number of different ways.

If you missed those posts, here’s a quick recap. In February, I did a month with no social media or what Cal Newport calls a digital declutter. I went into my reasons in that initial post. I completed the month successfully and recapped what the experience was like, what I learned, and what I was going to try to do going forward. I also did a post about how I’ve retrained my brain for Deep Work over a two and a half year time period by limiting distractions. Then most recently, I blogged about how, after all this work to corral my own distractions, I didn’t want to be a distraction for you, so I wrote about what I would share and not share online going forward in my post I Am Not Here to Distract You.

See? Told you I’ve been a bit obsessed with this topic, lol. And that’s not even counting all my Device-Free Summer posts about my kidlet from years past.

So, here I am talking about it again because since that month without social media, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to recapture the benefits of that fast while still maintaining a social media presence—something that is a part of my job as a writer. In my post where I outlined what I hoped to do going forward to tame social media, I had high hopes. But I admit that I haven’t stuck to a big chunk of those plans (like only checking social media at lunch.) It’s frustrating.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that in most habits I want to break, I tend to be an abstainer and not a moderator. (I got this terminology from Gretchen Rubin. See: Are You an Abstainer or a Moderator?) A moderator is a person who can just have a little of something (hence, moderate.) So they want to eat less sugar, but they don’t have to give it up completely. They have the personality that can have one cookie a week and move on.

In the past, I fancied myself a moderator. Because in some situations, I am. (I can make Halloween candy last months. But that’s because I only like candy a little bit.) However, in general, I’ve realized that I’m much more successful as an abstainer. It’s easier for me to have/do something none of the time than some of the time. For instance, about fifteen years ago I wanted to stop drinking soft drinks (diet or otherwise.) I failed at moderating. But once I said, no more, I am not a person who drinks soft drinks—then it was done. Fifteen years later, I still don’t drink them and I’m not tempted to. (This is coming from someone who used to drink like half a dozen Diet Mt. Dews a day.)

Abstaining takes the decision fatigue out of play. I just don’t do that, so there’s no debate to be had. That was why by the halfway point in the social media fast, I had this sense of ahh… I don’t have to think about that. The decision was made. I am not a person who does social media this month.

But, social media isn’t soft drinks. It’s a part of my job. It’s a part of life for most of us. It’s not as easy to just say no more ever. However, trying to moderate it hasn’t gone all that well for me. I’m not anywhere near where I was a few years ago or even pre-fast, but the impulse is still there, distracting me. Should I post? What should I post? I’m bored standing in line, let me look at Instagram. Did someone respond to my comment? How about now? Or now? (Note: I’m not making a moral judgement about social media. If you love it and it works for you, you do you. There are parts I love about it, too.)

So during this past month—which OMG May is trying to kill me with how busy it’s been with general life/family stuff—I’ve been trying to work through a very difficult block in the book I’m writing and finish up teaching my beginners romance writing course. Stress level has been high. I needed all my brain power to figure out the puzzle I’d written myself into and to be present for the students in my class. Posting on social media has mostly fallen by the wayside, but checking it…? Yeah, I’m reaching for it a lot because it’s a distraction from the hard things I’ve got to do.

This, of course, has got me thinking about how to find balance again. The next two months are going to be frenetic because I have a lot of writing to do, a family vacation, and then a trip to New York for RWA (which, of course, falls right before I’m supposed to turn in my book, arg.) I need to clear as much non-essential stuff off my plate as I can. Knowing all that made me want to do a summer-long social media break because: abstainer. But I know that’s not realistic for the long-term, so I’ve decided to try a variation.

I’m going to limit social media checking and posting to one day a week—Friday. This way, I don’t ignore people who have reached out to me and I can share/promote things if need be, but I don’t have a decision to make on a daily basis. I will only check it on Friday so that means every other day, the decision is already made. I’m hoping that will trick my abstainer brain into complying. ;)

I got the Friday idea from this post by Sol Orwell: How to Take Fridays “Off” (and still be insanely productive). The post isn’t about social media but more about how we tend to slack off on Fridays and a way to embrace that. So he reserves his Fridays for reading/learning for a few hours (he saves all the articles and such that he comes across during the week for this time) and also does networking on Fridays. That way, he’s still productive, but the things that could be distractions during the week have their place on his schedule. So taking a cue from him, I’m thinking my social networking can have a happy home on Fridays. I’ll also probably put “reply to non-urgent email” as a recurring task on that day as well. So then those things aren’t free-floating around in my head. They have a spot on the schedule and will be handled.

So starting tomorrow, I’m going to give this new plan a try and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work, it may be social media-free summer for me. But I’ll report back! And if you message me on social media and don’t get a reply for a little while, now you know why!

Have you found a great system to balance your social media or other distractions when you have a big project to work on?

After the 30-Day Social Media Ban: What Surprised Me & What I'm Changing

A month ago, I posted here and announced that I was going on a monthlong Digital Detox/Social Media Ban. I made the decision to give it a try after reading Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism. You can read the original post here if you missed it. But now I’m back with my report from the land without social media!

To be honest, I didn’t expect this experiment to be all that revelatory. I have been working on dialing back my digital distractions for about two years now. I’ve been blogging about that journey along the way. I thought a month without social media would be a good break and “detox” because I was annoyed that I was checking my phone so often again. However, it ended up being a lot more enlightening than I ever expected.

First, a play-by play

Week 1 - This is harder than it looks

I went into this way too confident, y’all. Smug, even. I got this, I thought. Ha. Week One told me to have a seat and rethink that notion. The initial week was tough! I kept picking up my phone and swiping to the screen that usually held my social media apps, and I had nothing to push because I had deleted them. The reflex was a hard one to break.

Also, I had posted about my social media break, and I wanted to see what people had to say about it, but I couldn’t. The need to get that little mental boost (aka dopamine) that people are reading your posts was real. I had to take my social media shortcuts off my desktop because I found myself too tempted to “just check.”

My Book of the Month came in the mail, and I wanted to take a pic for Instagram, and I realized I had nowhere to post it. I didn’t take a pic. (This would become a theme. I took a lot less photos in general.)

Day 5 - The Black Moment

In fiction, you eventually lead characters to the “all hope is lost” moment, which we call the black moment. My black moment on this journey hit at Day 5. I was really missing chatting with people online and checking social media. I yearned for it, lol. I felt this haze of loneliness even though I was still texting with friends and had my family around me. Day 5 made me question whether I could do it.

My guess is that when people try these social media breaks and give up, it’s probably around this day in the process. But wait! Hold out! Because…

Day 6 - Holy productivity, Batman!

The day after I was missing social media, I sat down in my office and started a stretch of days that would become some of my most productive ever. This month, I was working on putting together a new online romance writing course for beginners. In three days, I wrote 17k words of lectures. I hit a level of flow and deep work that I didn’t think I was capable of. I blogged more about that here, but I was able to manage four hours straight of focused work without any struggle. I was so excited that I was getting so much done, the yearning for social media began its rapid decline.

Week 2 - Traveling & Scandal

I put a similar background on my phone to remind me what I should be doing instead of picking it up. This one is from Austin Kleon and you can grab it here.

During week two, I traveled with my family to Florida for the Daytona 500. This meant sitting in airports, flying on planes, and then having a lot of downtime in the hotel room in between races—all with no social media. Normally, I would’ve been posting photos from the trip and scrolling through my feeds. Instead, I read in the downtime. I ended up reading one and half books on the three-day trip. Also, in some of the downtime in the room, my family and I used the Heads Up app to play the game and fill the time. We ended up laughing to the point of tears. I’m not sure I would’ve thought to bring out the game if I hadn’t been on the social media fast. I was bored. It gave me the idea to play the family game.

It was a little strange not being able to post pictures or video from the trip, but that just meant that I could keep my phone tucked in my bag for most of the trip. I did share some photos in my newsletter.

Another thing that happened in week two was a big plagiarism scandal in the romance writing community. Normally, when this kind of thing happens, all the social media networks light up with the “breaking news” and then everyone’s take on it. I have lost whole days in the past following that kind of thing. Instead, because I wasn’t on social media, I was alerted about it by a friend via text, and she sent me the link for blog posts about it after the facts were straight. It was so much calmer learning about what was going on from a well thought-out blog post rather than the 100mph feeds and noise of social media. The lesson here was that I wasn’t uninformed. I still heard about it. But I could get the information in a calmer way.

Week 3 - I’m a believer

I stopped missing social media. I honestly, truly did. I was drunk on productivity and focus, y’all. Lol. Being able to have that level of intent focus and mental flow without even trying was like playing with a new toy. It reminded me of how things used to be when I was in high school and college, when I could deep dive into projects for hours at a time. I wrote a novel when I was fifteen. There’s no way that would’ve happened if I’d grown up with Facebook in my pocket. I used to be able to concentrate. Now, I had the ability back. It felt like magic.

Week 4 - Finishing and Fear

This past week, I had days where I worked in deep work mode for 7 hours, only stopping briefly midday to eat lunch. The online class I thought would take me another 3 weeks minimum to get ready was done. Not only done, but edited, uploaded, and open for enrollment. That is crazy banana pants to me. I finished the project almost a month ahead of schedule. I know it had everything to do with this experiment.

I use the music program Focus @ Will for background music, and it tracks how long you use it. I only have it on when I’m actively working. So this is what my days started to look like. That’s 7 hours of focused work if you’re math-challenged like I am. Seven hours!

However, with that thrill of success came a hint of fear about coming back to it all. I knew from the start that I wouldn’t leave social media forever. Beyond being part of my job, I am a member of a number of author groups online that truly bring me joy. BUT I didn’t want to lose this newfound superpower. I knew I needed to figure out a way not to fall back into old habit. So that’s what I’ll be talking about in the rest of this post.

But first, a recap of what I gotten done in a month without the social media distraction:

• Wrote 33k words of lectures for the class.

• Edited 55k words.

• Researched teaching platforms and learned how to use one.

• Created worksheets for the class.

• Blogged and wrote newsletters.

• Created a slideshow and promo video for the class.

• Loaded and formatted 7 weeks worth of lectures into the class platform.

• Rebuilt the format of my author newsletter.

• Set up text to speech on my blog (if you click the little button next to the title, it will read the post to you.)

• Read 8 books. Eight!

• Went on a vacation and didn’t work.

• Opened my course for enrollment (there are still a few spots left at the beta price if you’re interested)

• Spent more time with my family without my face in my phone

Observations

• I took less photos (not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.)

• The time I spent on my phone (according to Screen Time) was about 2 hours a day. This is down about an hour from usual (7 hours added to my week!) This experiment didn’t make me stop using my phone completely. Almost all time spent on it was text messaging, reading articles on Safari, and podcasts.

• The morning was often when I missed social media the most because my husband would grab for his phone, and I’d have nothing to do for those first few minutes before I got out of bed. I ended up reading articles most of the time.

• Sometimes it was inconvenient not to have Facebook simply for logistical purposes. Restaurants only had a FB page or I needed to access one of kidlet’s activities, but they do everything through FB.

• When I blogged, I had no way to share my posts outside of my newsletter, so that felt a little frustrating. (I could’ve shared it remotely without actually getting on social media, but that felt like cheating.)

• I didn’t miss anything urgent or important while I was gone. I signed on yesterday and had hundreds of notifications, but nothing was urgent. (Also I found out that Instagram only lets you look back through 2 weeks of notifications, so the other two weeks are lost unless someone tagged me.)

The biggest takeaway

This felt entirely different from the things I’ve done in the past like blocking social media for a few hours while I work or taking a digital sabbath. Those give you a break, but don’t impact the habit. I think this long of a break is much more disruptive in stopping bad patterns and clearing your mind so that you can look at social media with a more skeptical eye. You get a taste of what it’s keeping you from. For me, that was higher focus and productivity but also a sense of calm.

So if you’re thinking about doing something like this for yourself, give yourself the full month. Don’t trick yourself into thinking that quitting for the weekend is going to make any real difference. I also highly recommend reading Digital Minimalism first because Newport gives a lot of tips on how to best set yourself up for the 30 days. If you go cold turkey with no plan on what to replace that social media time with, you’re more likely to give up in that black moment.

Going Forward

Gretchen Rubin talks about in her book Better Than Before that some people are moderators and some are abstainers. Meaning, some people do better with creating a habit by completely abstaining from something: I never drink soft drinks. Others do better as moderators: I only drink soft drinks twice a week.

Most people think they’re moderators, but I have a feeling that more of us would be better as abstainers. There was relief in knowing checking social media wasn’t an option at all. There was no decision to be made. The line was clear. And really, that is how I quit soft drinks fifteen years ago. I went from a four-a-day Diet Mt. Dew habit to zero and never went back. Abstaining was the key for me.

However, with social media, abstaining isn’t realistic for me (and many of you) in the job I’m in. I also don’t want to lose the good things I enjoy about social media like my Facebook groups. But after this experiment, I know that I need to make some serious changes because I don’t want to give up the newfound focus and calm.

My plan for bringing social media back into my life

1. Put 20 minute daily limits (via Screentime feature) on Facebook and Instagram on my phone.

   I thought that the phone would be the biggest issue for me and, for a while, planned to not put Facebook back on it. But I realized through this experiment that the phone was much less of a problem than checking on my desktop and disrupting my work day. So I have put these two back on my phone but with strict limits.

   UPDATE (3.18.19): I’ve taken Facebook off my phone again. Having it back for a few days made me realize that even with my best intentions, I find myself checking it more than I want. The 20-minute limits were too easy to get by because I just had to click “ignore limit” and it opened. I’ve left Instagram on my phone because that app doesn’t call to me very much. I’m fine checking that one a time or two a day and that’s it.

2. Turned on the Downtime feature on my phone starting at 8pm and ending at 6am.

   This will keep my from randomly checking my phone while I’m watching TV with the fam and hanging out with them.

3. No more social media shortcuts on my desktop.

   They are way too easy to click when I hit a hard spot in my work.

4. I’m keeping Twitter off my phone.

   I was already doing this before and plan to continue.

5. Only check social media on my desktop at lunch time and on weekends.

   This is the one that’s still in flux. I have also considered using my Hey Focus blocking app and blocking access to social media in the morning work zone and afternoon work zone, but I almost feel like I need to lean on that abstainer concept and make it very clear: I only check social media on my computer at lunchtime and on weekends.

   UPDATE (3.18.19): This hasn’t worked so far. I find that I need to check at least Facebook in morning to clear out the messages and respond or not having checked it becomes the distraction. I may shift this to checking in the morning in an allotted time and then at lunch. Still working this one out.

I may tweak these or come up with different methods, but I’ll report back. I have a genuine worry that I’ll fall back into old patterns, and I really, really don’t want to. I have a new book to write, and I love having the focus superpower. I’m thinking of getting a cape. ;)

So…thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Anyone else going to try their own digital declutter?

And for any writers interested in my course, here’s the video with all the details. I’ll be closing registration soon because we’re getting close to full! Course starts March 30th.

Training my Brain for Deep Work: Two and a Half Years In

Two and a half years ago, I blogged about reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work for the first time. At the time, I was feeling so scattered and distracted that I was legitimately concerned that I was developing some sort of memory problem or attention disorder. Reading Deep Work made me realize that it wasn’t a medical problem, it was an environmental problem. I had set up my life (as most of us have these days) with a constant flow of distractions: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, and the endless pings of notifications.

My phone was always with me, demanding my attention with every notification ding or little red bubble. When I was working on my computer, little notification boxes appeared in the corner for every email or mention on social media. Now, I think about how things were set up, and it seems ludicrous—that I let myself be inundated like that. But at the time, it just seemed like the way of things. That state is the default these apps put me (and you) on.

Then I read Deep Work in August of 2016. That book shifted my view of the digital world dramatically, and it really sent me into a deep dive on the topic. I went on to read a stack of books about the internet, social media, video games, the brain and distraction. That eventually led to me doing things like Device-Free Summer with kidlet in the summer of 2017 (and 2018), which truly was and continues to be life-changing for my kiddo and our family. And it’s also led me down a path of dialing back my own distractions step by step.

My own journey from scattered distraction to deliberate focus has been a two and a half year process. One thing I love about blogging is that I can look back on old posts and see what I was thinking/going through in the past. Reading that 2016 post is like reading about another person. So much has changed since I wrote that initial post, but it definitely hasn’t been an overnight change.

I can’t quite remember the order of all the phases I went through, but here were some stops along the journey:

• Turned off all sound notifications on both my phone and computer except for phone calls and texts.

• Turned off all visual pop up notifications.

• Turned off those red badge icons that tell you how many notifications you have.

• Deleted Tweetdeck which used to stay open all the time.

• Deleted Twitter from my phone.

• Basically abandoned Twitter - I just post news and blog links and respond to people who comment to me or message me directly. I no longer read my feed.

• Unsubscribed from social media emails that notify you that someone has commented or messaged you.

• Put a message on my FB messenger letting people know that I don’t check it and to email me if you need me.

• I downloaded the Hey Focus app, which blocks the internet/social media for a set amount of time.

• Started making a conscious effort not to pick up my phone in every idle moment.

• I bought a bigger purse and a Book Beau so that I’m always carrying a book or my Kindle with me so that when I do have idle moments, I pick up a book instead of my phone.

• Moved my social media apps into a folder on my phone on the last page instead of having them quickly accessible on the first page. (Right now they’re deleted completely because of the social media break.)

• Moved the apps I want to be using (Kindle, podcasts, New York Times) to my first phone page.

• Stopped watching the news (and getting news from Twitter) and subscribed to a paid, vetted news app (New York Times for me) and subscribed to a physical copy of the local newspaper.

• Made extensive email rules to farm out non-urgent, distracting emails/newsletters into folders so that I can choose when I go through them.

• Most recently, I’m in the middle of a 30-Day Social Media break after reading Cal’s newest book Digital Minimalism. I’m a little over two weeks into no social media at all, and I’ll update at the end of the 30-days how that experiences has been.

So those are some of the things I’ve done. Each one has brought me a step closer to reclaiming my ability to focus. But the reason why I’m writing about this today is because I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, I was hard at work on writing lectures for the online writing classes I’m about to launch. I had designated the afternoon for writing because that’s when I tend to do my best work. So after lunch, I put on my Focus @ Will music (that link will get you a 20 dollar credit to try it out if you’re interested) and got to work. Normal day. However, when I was done, I looked up and realized I’d written 5600 words and had been working for four hours straight with only a brief bathroom and coffee refill break. I’d been in a mental “flow” state for hours.

This has happened on occasion, of course. There are great writing days, good ones, and bad ones. However, lately, particularly during the two weeks of this social media fast, this is becoming the norm and not the anomaly. The week of the 11th, I wrote almost 18k words in four days. I am not a fast writer, y’all. A great week for me is 10k words. But that week, I basically wrote off the high word count as a quirk. Yesterday it finally hit me that—wait, it wasn’t a quirk. I’m doing it.

What is it? Well, in my initial post about Deep Work, I mentioned this point:

Deep focus can generally only be maintained for a certain amount of time - The author suggest that those just starting out, an hour a day of deep work might be all they can manage. But with practice, he said that people can do 3-4 hours of deep work in a day--which means that you're still going to have time to get the shallow stuff done.

At the time of that post, I was aiming for that one hour. I used to set my Hey Focus app for 25 minute bursts. Newport had suggested that 4 hours is about the limit for deep work before our brains are worn out, so I wasn’t even considering that amount of time. Focusing for four hours straight seemed a near impossible feat. But now, I’m doing it. Regularly. I’m not even using the Hey Focus app anymore. I don’t have to block the internet or my access to anything. My brain just knows once I start my Focus @ Will music, okay, now it’s time to work.

I think my last hurdle was the social media thing because even though I had turned off all notifications, I still would hop over to Facebook groups and such when I hit a snag in my writing or got stuck. While on this social media break, I don’t have that option, so there’s nowhere to go if I hit a snag. I either have to work through it or get up and walk around for a little while to think. Now, I don’t plan to quit social media for good, but after this experiment, I’m going to make some big changes, which I’ll discuss in a future post when I’m done with the 30-day fast/digital declutter.

My main point is that, yes, you can retrain your distracted brain (that is, assuming you don’t have a legitimate attention disorder or medical condition.) This was not a quick fix, and it wasn’t easy because breaking habits/distraction addiction is serious business. (I definitely felt this the first week of this social media fast. The lack of regular dopamine hits is real.) This was a step by step journey over 2.5 years. And I don’t doubt that I still have more to do on this road. However, I find it super exciting and empowering that we can take our brains back. Focusing really can be a superpower, especially in our current world where we’re all battling unprecedented levels of distraction.

So if you’re feeling like I was back in 2016, make a plan to wrestle back your focus. You can use some of the techniques I’ve listed above. I also highly recommend you read Deep Work and/or Digital Minimalism.

The first step in this process is getting over the resistance that’s going to crop up in the form of arguments as to why you are different from all these other people dialing back their online/social media time and can’t possibly dial things back. Here are some things your “don’t take away my fix” reflex may argue:

• I would do this, but I can’t not check my Facebook throughout the day because it’s part of my job. (It’s part of my job too, but I can corral it into a time slot. You have a job to do, and unless you’re a social media manager, you job is not “be available 24/7 on FB or Twitter.”)

• If I’m not on Twitter, I won’t be up to date on the news. (Breaking news has caused a lot of trouble over the last few years. Find a news source you respect and trust and get the well thought-out take after the actual facts have been gathered, which means you don’t need to check it more than once a day.)

• If I don’t get pop up notifications, I’ll miss something important. (Keep notifications on phone calls and texts from family and such. Those are where the emergencies will come in. Everything else can be checked on a schedule, including email. If you have a boss you have to respond to immediately on email, give them a notification sound but leave the others silent. Or make a schedule to check your email at the end of each work hour.)

• If I’m not on every social platform, I’ll be behind. (Doing them all well is nearly impossible. Focus on the one or two that you like.)

• If I don’t respond to someone within 5 seconds, they’ll be mad. (You teach people how to treat you. I have taught people that I’m not immediately available unless it’s an emergency or something truly urgent. If I respect my time, other people will too.)

• If I don’t post on Instagram (or insert favorite social media) every day, people will wonder where I’m at. (None of us are that important. People will survive if we don’t post every day.)

• Facebook is how I keep in touch my family and friends who I don’t see. (Totally cool. That doesn’t mean you have to be available to them 24 hours a day. Check it in the morning and in the evening in a time-limited way.)

My friend (and writing process guru), Becca Syme, has a saying she throws at us all the time: Question the premise. She usually means that in reference to writing advice people give you. However, it applies here as well. If those excuses above or others crop up, question the premise. Is that really true? Is there really no way around that distraction? Is there really no way to change that situation to where it benefits my focus? I promise that if you really want to make a change and improve things, you can. There’s a way.

I will step off my soapbox now, but I hope you’ve found some of this helpful. I’m only this passionate about this topic because I’ve seen it work—both for me and my kidlet. It’s life-changing stuff! : )

Let me know if you’re struggling with distractions or if you’ve tried anything to improve your focus. I’d love to hear! Leave your thoughts in the comments. (If you leave them on my social media, I won’t see them until the end of the fast, lol.)

The Digital Declutter & Why I'm Taking a 30-Day Social Media Break

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know that one of my favorite topics to explore and evaluate is our relationship with devices, the internet, and social media. For two summers, we’ve done device-free summer with kidlet and have had a lot of success with that (he even requested to have one last summer when I wasn’t planning on it.) It truly changed my kid. I realized today I don’t even know where his Ipad went. I haven’t seen it in almost a year. He used to be attached to that thing. And video games, which had hooked him hard, are now played as an afterthought and for hardly any time at all. He now complains to me that all the kids at school want to talk about is Fortnight—a game he’s never played and has no interest in playing. So I’m a believer in the digital detox or break, or in this case, declutter.

Unlike kidlet, I haven’t gone device-free, but I’ve done a number of things over the years to curtail my constant need to check my phone and other things on the internet so that I can focus and get my writing (aka deep work) done. I’m constantly refining my process. So when I heard Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, was coming out with a new book called Digital Minimalism, you know I was pre-ordering that thing as fast I could click. The book released this week, and I’m almost all the way through it. I’ll probably give a more thorough review once I’m done, but it’s already inspired me to try his method of a 30-Day Digital Declutter.

This isn’t a detox per se. It’s more of a swipe the slate clean of all your social media (and other digital distractions that may suck up your time like video games or too much TV streaming), see how you feel for 30 days. And then, after thirty days, scrutinize each app or service carefully to decide whether or not you want to add it back into your life.

I don’t anticipate that I will give up all social media after this. For one, it’s part of my job. However, I am looking forward to breaking my cycle of check, check, checking my phone in the bored moments or when I first wake up. I had already deleted Twitter off of my phone a few months ago and haven’t felt the need to add it back. For this thirty day stretch, I’m deleting Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest off my phone as well. I also won’t be checking these sites on my desktop. No social media. Period.

My plan is to post the graphic at the top of this post on all my social media channels, letting people know why I’m not responding, and then will step fully away for the month. During this time, I plan to continue to blog and send out my newsletter, so I’m not going off the grid, just social media.

I’m interested to see how my attention shifts during the month and how this will all make me feel. Will I have the itch to check? Will I feel calmer because I don’t have to check? Will I feel out of the loop? Will I get more work done? Will I fill that time with something better or something equally as distracting? I love an experiment, so I’m looking forward to finding out!

As always, I’ll report how things went after the month is up (or maybe even along the way). And if anyone is interested in doing something similar, you can check out the details of the Digital Declutter in Digital Minimalism.

UPDATE: After the 30-Day Social Media Ban: What Surprised Me and What I’m Changing and also Training My Brain For Deep Work: Two and Half Years In

Interested in this topic?

Here’s a list of other posts I’ve done about devices and digital distractions:

• A Screen-Free Summer for Kidlet: How, Why, & If I'll Lose My Mind

• The 10-Day Update 

• 5 Week Update on Screen-Free Summer

• The End of Our Screen-Free Summer: Results and Moving Forward

• The After-Effects of Our Device-Free Summer

• Device-Free Summer 2.0: Why We’re Doing This Again

• 7 Things to Reduce Distractions and Increase Focus

• On Productivity and Distraction: Deep Work

• Revisiting Deep Work

• Stop Letting Your Inbox Distract You: Making Rules Work For You