If you recall, last week I decided to take on a 7-Day, no social media challenge. During this challenge, I refrained from using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for a total of 168 hours.
This might seem like a short time for some, but for me, this felt like the week before school gets out – it dragged on forever. The purpose of this challenge was to help rid some of the garbage information from my life so I could focus on feeding my brain healthy data.
The challenge was a huge success for me. I’ve now redesigned some aspects of my productivity. I’ll show you how I did it and what tools I used.
What am I Battling?
The first step of this challenge was to recognize what exactly was the bad, or unhealthy information and what was good. Doing this allowed me to see what media sources were feeding me useless info and wasting my time and which ones actually made me a better student.
Here is the list of enemies:
Digg. Digg is an excellent social media voting site, the most popular even, but for some reason, the only Digg stories I end up clicking on are the ones titled “Your doing it wrong [PIC]”. These pictures are a waste of time and a huge distraction.
Facebook. I have too many friends. Now with Facebook’s new site design, I feel like my news feed updates every 5 seconds. I really don’t care about my ex-girlfriends trip to Paris, but Facebook thinks I need to see it. WHY?
YouTube. At the beginning of the semester I deleted my old YouTube account and created a new one. I wanted to start fresh – new subscriptions means fewer videos to watch. In just a few weeks, I was back to the same number of subscriptions and even more videos to watch. The lesson learned here is that YouTube teaches me nothing. 90% of my subscriptions are comedy and it’s a great site to visit when I want to relax, but visiting everyday is unhealthy.
My Battle Weapons
During my 7-day trial, I was able to develop new rules and strategies for combating these sources of unhealthy media.
Work on a schedule. If you don’t use time tables, I recommend starting today. I use time tables when I’m very busy, but haven’t used them that much this year. I made a time table on day one. That’s when it clicked, “Why did I ever stop using these.” If you don’t know what a time table is, don’t worry, I’ll be covering this in-depth in my next post. But for now, here is an example.
| Thursday April 8, 2010 |
|---|
| 7:00 – 8:00 Class |
| 9:00 – 5:00 Work |
| 5:00 – 6:00 Cook |
| 6:00 – 8:00 Gym |
| 8:00 – 9:00 Homework |
| 9:00 – 11:00 Work on CampusByte |
| 11:00 – Sleep |
Separate work from personal. This one helps big time. Think about it. Your mind likes to work on one thing at a time. “Multi-tasking” is inefficient. If anyone tells you otherwise, I officially give you permission to smack them in the face. Totally kidding, but really, the sooner you realize this the sooner you will start effectively producing quality content.
Notice how my timetable doesn’t say, “Work on CampusByte AND Homework.” These two things are very different and deserve their own attention. I make sure to finish my homework before I start my personal work or leisure activities.
Dive In. If you’re wondering how I motive myself to do hard work, I can honestly say I don’t have an answer for you except that I dive in headfirst. When faced with a task that I really don’t want to do, I find it easier to throw myself into my work without giving it too much thought. Before I know it I’m chugging along and my goal turns into finishing instead of starting.
Recovery is Key
No one is a machine. The people who say they can work tirelessly for days are big fat liars. Everyone needs time to relax and recharge their batteries. If you don’t you will end up burnt-out and ready to quit altogether.
The timetable above is a normal Thursday for me, but my weekends allow me to sleep in if I choose and I also get to have some free time. Also I never plan out my weekends unless I have group projects or important tests coming up.
Learn to have fun, that’s the whole reason you’re in college in the first place.
Stay Consistent With These Tools
Staying consistent with a plan like this can be hard. You might start strong then get tired and revert back to your old habits. I know this is going to be a challenge for me, so I’ve set some elements in place that will help me stay the course.
Social Oomph. This is an excellent tool for anyone who wants to automate part of their social media. Getting on Twitter constantly to update is time consuming and very distracting. Instead, I set Social Oomph to automate half of the tweets I send out. You can set them to publish at different times or immediately. Either way this will help keep you on track.
Facebook Hiding. Did you know you could block certain content from your news feed? I now have my news feed set to hide anything related to Farmville, Café World, Mafia Wars and ex-girlfriends. To set this up, simply click on the “Hide” button that pops up when you hover over a bad feed entry. You can choose to block the person or the type of app they are spamming.
Self Discipline. Nothing fancy here, just good old fashioned self discipline. You will notice that as you reduce the amount of garbage information you consume and increase the healthy information, the temptation to “cheat” seems to subside.
Stay focused and try to “eat” healthy. Did the 7-day challenge teach you anything? Let me know in the comments.
18 Comments
The more I think about this 7-Day Challenge, the more I want to try it. Especially after reading this article.
Good to hear the positive results! Oh, and thanks for informing me of the “hide button” on facebook. I get so tired of digging through the garbage.
The Hide button on facebook is a great thing. Good to hear you might start the challenge. Let me know how it goes.
Nice Jay! Good work.
Social Oomph seems nice! That is one of the biggest time eaters in my life, getting on twitter to tweet something I could have scheduled before. Thanks.
Social Oomph is an excellent tool. I actually found it a long time ago when I just joined twitter. I recommend it to anyone looking to free up some time.
Great post, I’m planning on trying something very similar myself, I’ll be contacting you about it very soon.
Sure man, let me know. I enjoy your comments.
This sounds like a great idea! Seems like computers and the internet take up so much of my time lately. I definitely need to try this out. I think what I will do is box my time like this blog called Litemind talks about. I like how you boxed your time or created a time schedule for what you are going to do for the day. It seems so productive, I’ll be testing it out.
Awesome, good luck. Keep an eye out for the next post where I’ll be explaining Timetables in-depth. Thanks for the comment bro.
This challenge is ridiculous! Not in a bad way, I just can’t fathom doing it haha. I think the 7-day challenge is just a great way to prove self-discipline. We are all so accustomed to using social networks daily that it is a good lesson to try and keep ourselves from doing it for a little while. This is definitely an accomplishment.
Thanks man, It was hard but well worth it. If you ever have the chance to do a challenge like this i guarantee you will learn some valuable lessons.
Congrats on completing your challenge! I know how hard it can be to give up our bad habits. I did a 30 day tv-fast which was ridiculously hard (and I dont even own a tv). I didnt even know I consumed that much television. However, eliminating it, really frees up your day and it puts you in a better mental state.
I totally agree on the value of having a game plan. I always kept failing at my attempts at giving up tv (more like internet episode streaming) because I didnt really think about what I would do without it.
This post (and exams) makes me want to re-do a media fast that is more inclusive (facebook+useless websurfing+tv+news). I guess, today is day one? =D
Hey Su,
Thanks for the kind words. I love challenges. Awesome that you’re starting a media challenge.
Good luck! Stay strong! Let me know if you need anything or have any questions.
Thanks for the motivation you have shared here. The truth is my schedule is very disorganized and I focus too much on social media without definite purpose other than entertainment. Perhaps I should follow your path and be organized and focus on the things more important. :-)
Good idea Walter, try out these steps and let me know what you think.
I kinda feel like the only one not totally consumed by social media….maybe b/c I’m a little older (I’d rather be a little younger & addicted to it). Great post :)
I use the hide button constantly! Who cares if you just found some corn that you can share with me, and no I don’t want to fertilize your crops.
Haha, nice to find other people who don’t play that horrible game. Thanks for the comment!
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