I’ve been having concerns about my time spent on certain social media sites lately. I feel that sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader are taking up too much of my time and not contributing much real value, relative to the time spent.
I found a fantastic Chrome plugin called Nanny that helps you limit the time you spend on Facebook and other websites by either letting you block the sites during certain hours or giving you the option of a time quota. It’s for those of us who don’t have the self-discipline shut things off and work!
I started by allowing 60 minutes of Facebook time each day, thinking that would severely change my news feed consumption.
What I surprisingly found out after few days of using the plugin is that in reality I actually spend much less than 60 minutes a day on Facebook. I always had about half an hour or more left of my quota. Could it be that I spend less than 30 minutes a day on this alleged monster time-suck?
The closer I looked at my stats I came to the realization that it’s not the total time spent that is the problem. The problem is the fragmented nature of my social media consumption. I realized those 30 minutes contain a copious amount of seperate visits each day. Every visit breaks my flow and introduces a mental context switch that tends to slow down my work recovery.
I haven’t found the perfect solution yet. (Blocking certain hours will surely help.) However, these results have made me more mindful of my online habits and I’m already hitting the Facebook bookmark less and less each day. I also took time to group some of my contacts to family and close friends so I can quickly scan news items and interact with people I care most about without being dristracted by the awesome India Talent Show video my former school mate posted.
This tiny insight has made my day much more productive and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything much. In fact, I feel like I am creating more and consuming less. And that’s a good thing, right?
