3 Ways to Find Focus & Fight Social Media Fatigue
After spending a good amount of 18 months focused on being focused I’m starting to realize that multitasking is not only a good thing it is essential to the wiring of my brain.
The rise of focus was as predictable as any point on the technology hype-cycle. Especially for me.
After all, I had spent the previous seven years of my life as an intrepid social media evangelist leading social for one of the world’s biggest brands. If I wan’t ALL OVER THAT SHIT 24/7/365 then the entire value proposition of why a billion dollar budget should sacrifice %0.01 of its gold for social would be thrown into question.
Multi-tasking fit well into my nature. Libra. Intellectually curious about everything yet focused on nothing. Bored X-er. Gamer. I was the high functioning quotient at the tongue of social media’s unending Pavolvian Pez dispenser.
And I was all over that shit. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Like so many, I was paving my own road to who knows where with bricks of social currency. I couldn’t go to sleep without checking Twitter one more time. Waking up to less than 10 likes of any given status update was a sour start. At one point, I started a meticulous unfollowing policy to help my Klout score. 20 minutes later, I realized how stupid that was and still laugh at those clowns still acting that way.
Like many before me, I realized that I was become more concerned connectivity than availability. Friday night out? Sure, as long as we select a venue with easily accessible power outlets and WiFi.
Naturally fatigue set in. I let mayorships flutter away. I went entire days without tweeting.
As this social boredom descended, my two young kids suddenly ascended. They literally started saying the darnedest things. My oldest made U-9 Lacrosse look more exciting than just about any professional baseball game. Social slowly but suddenly became not a projection of who I wanted to be but a reflection of who I am. Facebook truly became about connecting with family spread throughout the world. I stopped using filters on Instagram because my kids are cutest with #nofilter.
This corresponded with a rise in media about social fatigue and how FOMO was leading to actual MO itself. Of course, I missed all of that because I was busy finding my own new balance as a dad who happened to work in digital media. I was even relived when my new job didn’t include “social media” in the title…something I would have shirked even 24 months earlier.
In fairness, I never stopped sharing and caring about my feeds — I just became much more singular about it. Then I realized how much I didn’t care about my phone and said feeds and I went to the other extreme.
Family time was analog. Work was work. Music was for travel between the two. Singletasking took hold and my world slowed. Mostly for the better and boring.
I did not want to go back but I started to miss the hustle of being a share-sumer. So I conducted a few experiments to carefully and thoughtfully get back into the multitasking world without getting sucked down social media rabbit holes.
Experiment One: Music and Writing
I have to write A TON for my job and then I enjoy writing for myself. I’ve conducted mini-experiments with each type of writing with and without music of various genres. I write faster and better (higher quality + fewer typos) with music than without. Lower spectrum EDM (Flying Lotus > Oakenfeld) is optimal for the gathering and reworking of thought into written words. When an album is done, I close the keyboard. The natural break keeps me focused on the production of writing rather than just going on forever without focus.
Experiment Two: Do It Now vs Later
At a communications workshop, two years ago, I learned a simple but powerful lesson. Do it now if it takes less than two minutes. Otherwise wait. If you have 5 or more 2 minutes tasks bundle them up. Done and done. It’s taken me months to be disciplined enough to put this in real practice. But now that I have suddenly it seems that I have “found” time. Literally hours to get real shit done at work.
Experiment Three: Being there with the kids
It is waaaayyy to easy to be with the kids in any moment, realize how damn cute they are and want to capture every damn moment. That is probably the hardest habit to break. I take a crap-ton of pics of my kids because they are amazing. But think about this. The average parent takes more pics of their kids in one week then our parents did during a year. Maybe even our entire childhoods. We grew up ok. In fact better for it. There is only one terribly embarrassing picture of 4-year-old me peeing in the bathtub and it is safely locked away in a yellowing wax paper album. Prefer that to a 3 minute YouTube video of kiddie cuteness that will become penultimate bully fodder for some douche named Rhett in 2019.
My new rule: Snap a lot. Do it quick. Post nothing until later
No one cares if your moment shared on Facebook is right now or sharing a memory from yesterday. Spend more time in the now and sharing it later will create a richer post.
So in summary:
- Use music to as a time keeper for work projects.
- Break tasks into short/quick/now and longer/later blocks.
- Capture moments in the now, but wait and post them later.
