Dealing With Social Media and Technology Overwhelm

Every single viral post about quitting social media goes in this general pattern: “I always looked at my phone. I stopped looking at my phone. I noticed everyone else looks at their phone. I appreciated sunsets more.”

People see the irony in quitting social media, then writing a post that goes viral about quitting social media, right?

Can I win an award for deleting my Facebook profile for a year and a half and not writing a post about it?

However, since these posts are going viral, there are obviously a lot of people who want to quit social media and I completely understand the desire.

The internet is here and it always will be from this point forward. The key is learning how to deal with it.

I don’t think the problem is social media, I think the problem is in the balance and letting negative people come into our feed, suck our time, and drain our positivity and productivity.

When I quit Facebook completely (P.S. Facebook makes it incredibly hard to actually delete your whole profile), did much change? Not really. My procrastination was still there, it just found different outlets.

There was another post about a guy who quit the WHOLE internet for a year: read here. He found the same results: his procrastination took root in other forms.

Social media overwhelm has a lot to do with our own internal discipline instead of some mysterious force we can’t control. With slight tweaking, it can become fun again.

As a transplant who moved to Colorado after leaving my home state of Michigan, it kind of sucked to quit some of the big sites for awhile. When I re-joined I was shocked at how many people got married, had babies, passed away, moved, etc., in just one year. Most of these were people I once knew, not people who are in my daily life anymore, but it was still nice to be in the loop. Community and roots are important to us.

I also manage brands, and whether I like it or not, Facebook is a huge part of that.

I am the type of person who can get too much into something if I don’t have rules. (Oops did I just spend 12 hours gambling? Oops did I just marathon every episode and season of Desperate Housewives for three days? How am I out of rum?)

Taking this approach, I set incredibly strict rules for my social media, my phone, and generally how I spend my time with the internet. It took away all the overwhelm and made it a fun experience again.

These won’t work for everyone, but these rules changed my life and made everything easy to manage again. Some of them are harsh, and you don’t have to take it to that extreme. You can use some of these if you want, I swear by them:

Rules for my phone:

Absolutely no notifications get pushed to my locked screen. When I allow notifications to come through at any time, my ADD kicks in every time I see the screen light up and all of a sudden an hour has gone by. This would add an extra two hours or so to the time it took me to write an article that should only take 30 minutes. The only thing that comes through my lock screen are text messages, but I leave my phone in a drawer when serious work is getting done. Everything else can wait, even phone calls.
It’s on silent most of the day. That “ding” is addicting, but I wouldn’t let anyone come knock on my door every 30 seconds, so why would I allow it on my phone?
No mindless chatting. I never, ever, ever talk on my phone during working times. Most of my friends hate this, but I quickly learned that I could easily spend four hours chatting and then whoops there goes my day. The one complaint my teachers had about me at parent-teacher conferences was that I never ever ever could shut up, so I could easily do it all day. (Thank god I was in school before the Ritalin boom.)

Rules for Facebook:

No e-mail notifications. I already receive close to 400+ e-mails a day, Facebook notifications are not welcome in that list. I will get the notifications when I log in again, I don’t need double the notifications.
I went through and cleaned out my entire Activity Log since 2012. I also clean out my friends list every six months. It is the one space I cherish and protect. It keeps my stream extremely positive.
I use segmented lists. Everyone doesn’t need to see everything.
No, I will not install Facebook Messenger app on my phone.
I have accepted Facebook is a business and will do as they please with algorithms. This also reduced the amount of time reading Facebook articles because I truly don’t care. The amount of articles about people loving/quitting/hating/bitching about Facebook are astounding. It’s just a platform I’m borrowing while it is still relevant and I realize it isn’t something I personally own. As a marketer, I will go where the people are, end of story.
No push notifications to my desktop.
I only allow 100 “liked” pages. More than that and my feed gets ridiculous. (About 85 of them are puppy pages. This makes my feed just insanely adorable.)
I “unfollow” a lot of people. The drama with un-friending someone is ridiculous, so I only have about ten people I follow and keep up with. My best friends rarely use Facebook anyway, so we mostly communicate with text, over drinks, and with Snapchat. If someone spends every update complaining, why are you allowing that? You wouldn’t let someone walk into your house and yell at you, so take if off your Facebook too.
A set time to update and manage my Pages. This reduces mindless surfing.
Understand and know that everyone on Facebook is trying to brag. Rarely do people talk about their real problems. Spend ZERO time comparing your life to someone else’s because you don’t know how bad they might be suffering even if it looks fine. Think of Facebook as high school all over again.

Rules for Twitter:

On Twitter there is this magical option called Lists. I have one list for clients/friends/interesting people where I want to see their daily stream. I also installed Tweetbot which allows me to mute scheduled tweets. Sorry, “social media guru’s”, stop flooding my stream with your inauthentic scheduled posts. This reduced my overwhelm on Twitter by at least 80% and brought back quality people and conversations which is, you know, the point of Twitter.
You don’t have to read everything. Seriously. Most of the articles are just clickbait or they’re news for a day before it’s forgotten tomorrow.

Rules for television:

I am a huge, huge movie buff. Scary movies are my crack. However, I quit Netflix this year. I now only rent movies from the library. I’ll get Netflix back one day, just not yet.
I only watch three seasons of TV a year. With the above point, I only rent the seasons from the library, so they’re not on demand 24/7. They come in usually two or three months later. In 2014 I have only watched Orange Is the New Black, Orphan Black (someone please give Tatiana Maslany an Emmy), and Parks and Recreation.
I refuse to get cable. I haven’t had it for 25 years now, so why start?

Rules for E-mail:

Set hours for e-mail reading + replying.
If a newsletter doesn’t provide serious value for three consecutive e-mails, I unsubscribe. (My favorites: Craig Ballantyne / Early to Rise, Huckberry, Ashley Ambirge, and Ramit Sethi) Don’t feel guilt about unsubscribing. Your inbox is precious.
If there isn’t a serious client deadline, or someone I’m waiting to hear from, I turn off all e-mails on my phone. Yes, you can actually remove your e-mails on the iPhone. It’s worth it, I promise.
I learned this one from Craig Ballantyne: E-mail is everyone ELSE’S goals, not yours. Focus on your goals first, then help them second.

Rules for Instagram:

I only follow people I really, truly care about. People who inspire me and motivate me. I’m one of those annoying people who has a fitness Instagram account, too, so I really have to watch myself with this because I can easily spend hours looking at abs. (Sorry not sorry.)
I understand that a photo doesn’t replicate the moment. Looking at a picture of a sunset doesn’t give the same fuzzy feeling that looking at an actual sunset gives me. As a result, I take less pictures.
I follow very few celebrities. While I don’t have any studies to prove this, I have noticed my friends that are the hardest on themselves in terms of their looks/weight/success follow the most celebrities/people with perfect-looking lives. I don’t know if there is any relation between the two, but it is something I keep in mind. Jealously is an easy trap.

Rules for YouTube:

YouTube is by far my worst problem because I find the most value in it. To deal with this, I usually batch all my YouTube watching to my bed time or on my Sunday mornings.
YouTube is where I get my news, fitness information, keep in touch with friends, and most of my laughs. I am head over heels in love with YouTube. (P.S. Google, I’d marry you. Plz love me.)
99.9% of the time, I adjust my screen to cut off the “related” videos so I stick to only the channels I am subscribed to. I decided this rule after I started watching a video about internet marketing, somehow ended up on cat videos, then puppy videos, then somehow a giant worm getting removed from some guy’s gut. This cycle actually happened a few times, so I had to find a way to manage it and the secret is in hiding the related videos from view.

Rules for the Internet:

I refuse to read 80% of articles. I know what the writer is trying to do with clickbait: “THIS INGREDIENT THAT YOU MIGHT EAT FOR DINNER WILL KILL YOU.” “Top 10 Things That…” “This celebrity did/said this SHOCKING thing” etc, etc. I see you. I’m not falling for it.
With every single post, make rules for reading it. When I find myself going down the internet rabbit hole, I stop and ask myself, “Is this going to make me money? Is this an issue I care deeply about? Is this one of my life goals?” If none of those are a “yes”, I don’t read. Is seeing a picture of Kim Kardashian’s naked body going to enhance my life? Nope. I don’t give a shit, then.

Rules for my health:

The biggest struggle for me is the amount of strain I put on my body by sitting so much and cramming my neck looking down at my phone. I saw a side picture of myself with my Hunchback of Notre-Dame looking-self, freaked out, and implemented health rules along with internet rules. Balance.

A huge part of my problem with the internet is the amount of time I spend hunched over my desk. It happens when I write, when I network, when I research, etc. No matter what, every single night I go to the gym, stretch, foam roll, and lift some heavy-ass weights. Sitting at my computer my whole life will literally kill me, so I give myself no choice but to balance it. My reward when I’m there is to look at more pictures of abs and watch YouTube while I do cardio, so that reward cycle keeps me going back. Rewards are essential for starting a habit.
Long, long dog walks. I have a dog that has a LOT of energy, so I have no choice but to take her out all the time to play or else she will drive me nuts. It’s like an in-house personal trainer: “WALK. NOW. OR THE SHOES GET IT.”
I cook real food. I value the internet more than a lot of people, but I refuse to be disconnected from my food. Growing my first tomato at 12 was euphoric. Personally, I think everyone should spend a good part of their week getting their hands into some dirt. It makes me appreciate how far we have come as a society while I hop on my space rocket computer and talk to people in Russia with a click of a key.

Rules for Life:

My only resolution this year was: Consume less, Create more. Did I? Kind of. I consumed far too much (even with these rules, I still slipped), but I released my first e-book, created way more passion products, and met some of the coolest people through the internet.
I got rid of my need for popularity. “HOW CAN I GET MORE FOLLOWERS?” This was clearly a thought going through my mind when I was going through all the articles I favorited. I have learned that social media attention comes after you do something worth talking about. So, I keep plugging along and working and maybe it’ll come, maybe it won’t. All I know is that right now I have somehow attracted some of the best people to talk to on social media so I’m not sure if I would want more attention. Removing the likes/comments from my own internal value as a person was harder than I realized. (I kindly remind myself that the Malala Fund only has 238,081 likes on Facebook while Kim Kardashian has 24 million.) (P.S. I’m sorry for picking on you Kim, but your butt is all over my feed no matter how many rules I have. There are a lot of butts on my bucket list, but yours was not one of them and now I am intimately acquainted with it.)
Never skip a girls night. No matter how tired I am, I always, always make sure to take the opportunity to see my friends downtown. My best friend died when I was 15, so I realize that this whole time thing is precious and life is not guaranteed.
I make no apologies for being a Millennial that takes selfies. I take far more than less people, but I refuse to feel shame about it or taking pictures of my food. Embrace what you love about the internet.
I will also indulge in my phone when someone isn’t in front of me. All these articles are always talking about how people are on their phone 24/7, but who cares? If I want to Tweet while I’m waiting in line, I will. However, if I am still Tweeting while the barista is waiting for me, then I move into “inconsiderate bitch” territory. People were rude before phones, too. Phones are just an enhancer of someone’s real personality.
No phone time on dates. Seriously. This could be someone you might marry, but your Facebook notification is more important? This is Manners 101. If you have a serious phone call pending, give the other person a head’s up. I’m all for playing on a phone to pass the time, but seeing dates where the two people don’t even talk to each other makes me feel secondhand embarrassment.
No phone during girls nights or client meetings. My time is precious and I treat clients and my friends with the same respect. No, I will not extend a meeting because you were too busy e-mailing while we were talking. Yes, friend, I will listen to every story about you and your significant other because there is no worse feeling in the world than someone only half-listening.
The phone goes off when I sleep. I am deathly crabby when I don’t sleep. I mean, seriously things get broken, people are yelled at, and minds are lost when I am sleep deprived due to an unwarranted wake-up.
Quiet time from the crack of dawn until 11 am. The most essential part to being a writer is actually writing. Too many people don’t actually do their work, they just read + regurgitate. (Gary Vaynerchuk brought the hammer on this with his show #AskGaryVee: watch here) No phone calls, no texting, a little Twitter, no e-mails… Just writing and major to-do’s. I have found that the mornings are my magic time along with 5 pm — 7 pm and 9 pm — 11 pm. For whatever reason, my creative bursts happen at that time, so I let it flow. When I let my phone go unregulated during these times nothing gets accomplished. Find your magic hours and be ruthless with your attention.
I only follow about 100 people regularly because I enjoy their work, they try hard to enhance lives with value, we’re friends, or they’re just incredibly talented / funny. I had to regulate this after realizing that I was following people who added zero value to my life. I found the few I truly care about and I make no apologies for fan-girling over each and every one of them.
I track my time. I have a paper planner that has 15 minute time-tracking slots to write in what I am working on. Every hour during my productive time, I stop and ask myself three questions, “Am I bringing value? Am I doing something that matters? Am I making money?” If they all get a “no”, I re-focus.
I am all-in on what is in front of me. Writing? ALL IN when I’m writing. Hanging out with friends? ALL IN with focus. Watching Orphan Black? ALL IN the story. This has improved my attention span ten-fold. I don’t do multiple things at once because the output is always low-quality.
Planning is essential. I plan my client work, social media breaks, workout time and everything else at the start of the week.
I NEVER EVER read internet comments. I get enraged with purely ignorant comments and every comment section is full of them. Years ago, I received my first hate comment along the lines of, “You’re a stupid bitch I hope you die.” I saw they lived in my city and commented back that I was going to track them down and punch them in the throat. Needless to say, after some backtracking I realized it was just some pathetic 12-year-old and I felt like an idiot. I messaged him on Facebook that I was going to tell his mom and to grow up. He pleaded back that he was just kidding. Needless to say, now I imagine every comment as that turd 12-year-old and it makes it easier to ignore. Whenever I get sucked in I remember that all the people I admire spend no time arguing in comments.
I happily block people. With managing as many social sites and brands as I do, I have encountered truly crazy, disgusting, angry, sad, violent people. It’s not healthy for my blood pressure to deal with any of these people. Actual intellectual debates are one thing, but insanity is simply blocked.
Stop saving articles for later. I’m STILL cleaning out the 50,000+ articles I have saved over the years (Yes, seriously). As I clean them out I realized how much crap I wasted my time reading while only about 1% of them have any value.
I do real-world work while still appreciating the value of the internet. I can’t talk about writing unless I am published. I can’t talk about fitness unless I am actually in shape. I can’t talk about business unless I actually have a real, profitable business. Real world results still matter. The internet is just the icing on the cake.

Daily reminder: