While I’m not depressed or at a sort of life crossroads; I do feel overwhelmed and not keeping up. I’ve never been great at coordination, to-do lists and time management, but I feel more out of sequence on what I need to do than ever before.
This maybe a result of a culmination of life events highlighting my existing inefficiencies. However it does feel like my ongoing struggle to maintain healthy online habits may be an unnecessary factor here.
I’ve posted previously on how I manage my online habits, particularly on my phone. Restrictions I place on when and where I use online services but I still feel distracted. I don’t hate my time on social platforms, indeed there are some great communities of likeminded interests; however it doesn’t stop it feeling like it’s taking away my focus and time on other things I should be doing.
It maybe time for a change. A hard cutoff from the online services. Not just from my phone, not just logging off from them and resisting; a full detox and deletion.
The question I keep coming back to internally is: do any of these microblogging services actually provide more value in my life than what it takes from me?
No doubt, I’ve interacted and actually met some cool people in my online interactions. Some of them I may lose contact with. That part of the disconnect will suck.
I also know I can’t just disconnect from it all and expect other items to magically get better. I hope to use more of my focus to improve my ability to organise and get life items addressed.
Then there’s aspects of real life that now blends into the online life that gets slightly more annoying to disconnect.
My kids sporting clubs and school groups are all on Facebook. While I don’t personally have much of an issue with Facebook usage, I would love to still turn that tap off. However, I also don’t think it would be very fair to dump those things for my wife to keep track of for me.
I will discuss with her before I decide on that one.
Outside of Facebook, the plan is to get rid of the following: Instagram, Threads, Reddit, one of my micro.blogs, a few small forums I’m part of, and even Mastodon.
LinkedIn is an interesting one. It feels like a need to have given I’m in the technology industry. I know you can very much communicate and connect without it, but I’m not a natural face-to-face communicator and connector. Networking is hard enough as it is for me; the added friction of trying to do so without a LinkedIn connection feels a step too much.
I don’t have a firm date of when I will pull the plug, but it will be sooner rather than later. It’s coming up to the beginning of May; a new month seems like a good a time as any.