Most of us spend too much unproductive time in front of social media during the day. Like Alec Baldwin’s alien character in the recent Hulu Super Bowl commercial says, “What are you going to do, turn off your TV and your computer? Ha!”
It’s sadly true. Television is one of the most unproductive habits you can engage yourself in. Though some people advocate getting rid of your TV altogether, I think I’d rather be slightly unproductive than miss Lost. The internet and social media have together created another hole for us to get trapped in. But, we have a choice: keep digging, or stay out.
I love Facebook. It allows me (much more-so than MySpace did) to keep in touch with current friends, family, and even friends I haven’t seen face-to-face for 10+ years. However, if you let yourself get overwhelmed with invitations, wall-posts, and applications – it’s easy for just this one site alone to consume you. Here’s a few tips to make your Facebook time less interfering and more productive.
- Write down what you want your Facebook experience to be. For me, it’s simply to stay in touch with people.
- Turn off email alerts. This will prevent you from clicking through every time someone adds you to something and distracting you from what you were focused on.
- Block invitations from people or applications. I appreciate you want to give me a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t do anything for my life (or yours).
- Set aside time for Facebook. If you know you’ll only spend 15 minutes each day checking friends, leaving messages, etc – you’ll now have the rest of the day freed up to build your empire.
These tips can be translated to almost any site that is sucking your productivity away. I’ll put together a Twitter post another time, but for now – do whatever it takes to make your online life less of a distraction.
How do you prevent social sites from eating up your productivity?
