No Social Media Notifications, Posting or Scrolling in May | A Trial
I like to set myself goals, which is evident with my different writing challenges as well as the fact when I commit, I get stubborn and I go through with it. A couple of weeks ago, I started considered if I was spending too much time scrolling on social media and if it would be a good idea to disable some of the many notifications usually clogging up my phone. I won't say it's a social media detox but it's a little something interesting to try out and see if it enables me to be more productive and/or perhaps be outside more now that the weather has finally turned warmer. I just want to see how it feels to distance myself from being on various screens so often.
As a society, we have become accustomed to having our phone with us at all time and we have several platforms that we can be reached through; phone calls, texts, message apps, dms, email, photo exchanges, FaceTime, and probably more that I can't think of at the moment. It's a lot. And we all have these notifications going through, keeping us up to date, whether it's turning on notifications for someone we follow on social media or news apps to keep up with current events.
We want to stay on top of things. We want to know what is going on. We want to stay connected and keep tabs on the things that we feel are important. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing but I do think that it can become a little excessive sometimes. Too often, I find myself watching something on my laptop and then I'll pull my phone out to scroll a little or play a game. Why can't I just focus on the series, video or film that I put on? Why this need to be on two screen simultaneously? Even now, when I'm writing, I have also put on music.
We rarely do just one thing at a time anymore. Perhaps, that's why I like delving into a book, online or physical, so much. I rarely listen to music when reading novels (I do when I study though), so it's just me and the universe that the author created. I suppose I hope that my words and stories can do that for people as well. Reading and writing has always been a wonderful place for escape and expression and a source of creativity. It's not this mindless numbing feeling that I feel when I read a feed of short tweets or watch people talk (sometimes a bit nonsense) on Facebook.
Appropriately, I just got a notification through to my computer but not my phone. It was the owner of Money's stable writing out to let everyone know that the outside dressage course will be harrowed tomorrow morning. Why I say that it didn't come through to my phone is obviously related to this post. I just went through my phone and turned off all notifications for my social media (with the exception of my Facebook Messenger app because my study group coordinate our project work over that one, so I can't justify turning it off). Below is the proof and I guess I have to look up how to turn off notifications on my MacBook as well.
The apps above are the ones I have turned off notifications for. It's odd, especially because I usually like to have a few notifications sitting in my pull down area on my phone until I get around to seeing what they were about. Or if I'm being honest, I just like to keep some of them there, tweets specifically from people I like enough to have push notifications on. So Twitter will definitely suffer a little but I only have notifications on for two people. It's quite a bit more from the YouTube channels I follow, where I probably get roughly a few a day. LinkedIn is a new addition to my social media and it probably won't produce too many. In case someone wants me to join their network, I'll get an email as well, so I'm not worried about missing out on that. Snapchat I only use to snap a selected group of friends but I can just switch over to Messenger to contact them. I have a little handful of people I follow on Instagram on push notifications, as well as notifications when I get likes on my own photos, so that'll be a little more. Facebook will probably be the source of the second most notifications during a given day as I'm in a bunch of different groups, so I might also have to check those notifications occasionally to make sure I don't miss anything important. But by far, the most notifications I would get during a given day comes from my tumblr because for some reason a whole bunch of people have decided to follow me on there, which is lovely but it usually brings in around 100 notifications pretty easily in a normal day and then I have a small handful of people on push notifications.
So I will be saying goodbye to all of those notifications apps for a little while. Like I said, it's not a strict no-social media rule for the whole month. I'll probably check my Facebook notifications once a day, as well two selected Instagram stories from two tall nerds who are on tour, and obviously if something comes through to my email, I might also check it out. I am not taking the notifications off my email because I'd be too scared that I'd miss something important from my study programme. And I am keeping both the normal text app and Facebook Messenger on notifications so I'm reachable. But my goal is to not scroll during this month and then I'll see if I miss it.
Another thing that ties into this notifications stuff is the fact that I have decided to take a hiatus from posting on social media during May as well. This mostly applies to my writing schedule because in this year I have been posting roughly every three days and just now I finished up two massive novel-length stories that had weekly updates. I want to take a step back from posting stories to focus a bit more on the writing part and delve into some of the many ideas that have been pushed to the back of my mind while I focused on writing and updating the ones that were being shared. This also means that I won't be making posts on tumblr for about a month, which to be fair is mostly reblogs but I wonder if anyone will miss me on there. I use Instagram occasionally, so I'll hold off on posting photos, though I'm sure I'll still enjoy taking them and either I'll just keep them to myself or I will upload them when I come back in June. I will also still be watching YouTube because I enjoy that too much to cut it out entirely but I might try to limit how much I watch and not just put it on for mindless background noise, which I do occasionally now.
One thing that breaks my heart a little about a month of not posting on social media is the fact that this will include this blog. Despite having hardly anyone that reads it, it is a form of social media. And since July 2015, there have been at least two posts a month and I love that. I have breaking cycles, so we'll see if I can truly leave this place vacant for all of May but I do want to try and see how I feel.
I don't know whether it's realistic or not for me to do this but it's been on my mind consistently enough lately that I wanted to try it out because if it was occupying so much of my thought space, then I want to see how it'll play out. Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all, or something like that. I have to write a group project in end May, I have a week long exam assignment happening in the last week of May, I have another assignment due mid-June that I can already start on and I have to prepare for an oral exam during the first week of June. So if this could get me into a more productive mode, it would be a good thing. I have finished with classes last week, so I suddenly have a lot of air in my calendar, especially after a few hectic months, but I need to stay productive, work on my exams, see my horse more often and get working on writing some of the new stuff that excites me.
I'm proud of the fact that I write and share my writing so much. I like it. I love getting comments from people about how the love what I write and I am a little scared of going on a month hiatus but at the same time, a month passes pretty quickly, so I suppose that I'll be fine. And besides, it's important to take a moment to recharge yourself and return with renewed energy instead of pushing yourself until you become the victim of burnout. I don't want that to happen to me and while I never have gotten any pressure form my readers to keep my upload schedule, I put a lot of pressure on myself. So this is me officially taking the pressure off myself. (Well, not entirely. I still have the goal to write every single day, but that's different. I think).
I might get a deep itch within my skin after a couple of days and break my attempt at no posting, no notifications and no scrolling and break it off. I might make it through the whole month easily after a couple of days of getting used to it. It might make me feel more productive or I might just find other ways to waste my time. We will find out. I will be back on the 1st of June with a report if I stick with it.
As a society, we have become accustomed to having our phone with us at all time and we have several platforms that we can be reached through; phone calls, texts, message apps, dms, email, photo exchanges, FaceTime, and probably more that I can't think of at the moment. It's a lot. And we all have these notifications going through, keeping us up to date, whether it's turning on notifications for someone we follow on social media or news apps to keep up with current events.
We want to stay on top of things. We want to know what is going on. We want to stay connected and keep tabs on the things that we feel are important. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing but I do think that it can become a little excessive sometimes. Too often, I find myself watching something on my laptop and then I'll pull my phone out to scroll a little or play a game. Why can't I just focus on the series, video or film that I put on? Why this need to be on two screen simultaneously? Even now, when I'm writing, I have also put on music.
We rarely do just one thing at a time anymore. Perhaps, that's why I like delving into a book, online or physical, so much. I rarely listen to music when reading novels (I do when I study though), so it's just me and the universe that the author created. I suppose I hope that my words and stories can do that for people as well. Reading and writing has always been a wonderful place for escape and expression and a source of creativity. It's not this mindless numbing feeling that I feel when I read a feed of short tweets or watch people talk (sometimes a bit nonsense) on Facebook.
Appropriately, I just got a notification through to my computer but not my phone. It was the owner of Money's stable writing out to let everyone know that the outside dressage course will be harrowed tomorrow morning. Why I say that it didn't come through to my phone is obviously related to this post. I just went through my phone and turned off all notifications for my social media (with the exception of my Facebook Messenger app because my study group coordinate our project work over that one, so I can't justify turning it off). Below is the proof and I guess I have to look up how to turn off notifications on my MacBook as well.
The apps above are the ones I have turned off notifications for. It's odd, especially because I usually like to have a few notifications sitting in my pull down area on my phone until I get around to seeing what they were about. Or if I'm being honest, I just like to keep some of them there, tweets specifically from people I like enough to have push notifications on. So Twitter will definitely suffer a little but I only have notifications on for two people. It's quite a bit more from the YouTube channels I follow, where I probably get roughly a few a day. LinkedIn is a new addition to my social media and it probably won't produce too many. In case someone wants me to join their network, I'll get an email as well, so I'm not worried about missing out on that. Snapchat I only use to snap a selected group of friends but I can just switch over to Messenger to contact them. I have a little handful of people I follow on Instagram on push notifications, as well as notifications when I get likes on my own photos, so that'll be a little more. Facebook will probably be the source of the second most notifications during a given day as I'm in a bunch of different groups, so I might also have to check those notifications occasionally to make sure I don't miss anything important. But by far, the most notifications I would get during a given day comes from my tumblr because for some reason a whole bunch of people have decided to follow me on there, which is lovely but it usually brings in around 100 notifications pretty easily in a normal day and then I have a small handful of people on push notifications.
So I will be saying goodbye to all of those notifications apps for a little while. Like I said, it's not a strict no-social media rule for the whole month. I'll probably check my Facebook notifications once a day, as well two selected Instagram stories from two tall nerds who are on tour, and obviously if something comes through to my email, I might also check it out. I am not taking the notifications off my email because I'd be too scared that I'd miss something important from my study programme. And I am keeping both the normal text app and Facebook Messenger on notifications so I'm reachable. But my goal is to not scroll during this month and then I'll see if I miss it.
Another thing that ties into this notifications stuff is the fact that I have decided to take a hiatus from posting on social media during May as well. This mostly applies to my writing schedule because in this year I have been posting roughly every three days and just now I finished up two massive novel-length stories that had weekly updates. I want to take a step back from posting stories to focus a bit more on the writing part and delve into some of the many ideas that have been pushed to the back of my mind while I focused on writing and updating the ones that were being shared. This also means that I won't be making posts on tumblr for about a month, which to be fair is mostly reblogs but I wonder if anyone will miss me on there. I use Instagram occasionally, so I'll hold off on posting photos, though I'm sure I'll still enjoy taking them and either I'll just keep them to myself or I will upload them when I come back in June. I will also still be watching YouTube because I enjoy that too much to cut it out entirely but I might try to limit how much I watch and not just put it on for mindless background noise, which I do occasionally now.
One thing that breaks my heart a little about a month of not posting on social media is the fact that this will include this blog. Despite having hardly anyone that reads it, it is a form of social media. And since July 2015, there have been at least two posts a month and I love that. I have breaking cycles, so we'll see if I can truly leave this place vacant for all of May but I do want to try and see how I feel.
I don't know whether it's realistic or not for me to do this but it's been on my mind consistently enough lately that I wanted to try it out because if it was occupying so much of my thought space, then I want to see how it'll play out. Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all, or something like that. I have to write a group project in end May, I have a week long exam assignment happening in the last week of May, I have another assignment due mid-June that I can already start on and I have to prepare for an oral exam during the first week of June. So if this could get me into a more productive mode, it would be a good thing. I have finished with classes last week, so I suddenly have a lot of air in my calendar, especially after a few hectic months, but I need to stay productive, work on my exams, see my horse more often and get working on writing some of the new stuff that excites me.
I'm proud of the fact that I write and share my writing so much. I like it. I love getting comments from people about how the love what I write and I am a little scared of going on a month hiatus but at the same time, a month passes pretty quickly, so I suppose that I'll be fine. And besides, it's important to take a moment to recharge yourself and return with renewed energy instead of pushing yourself until you become the victim of burnout. I don't want that to happen to me and while I never have gotten any pressure form my readers to keep my upload schedule, I put a lot of pressure on myself. So this is me officially taking the pressure off myself. (Well, not entirely. I still have the goal to write every single day, but that's different. I think).
I might get a deep itch within my skin after a couple of days and break my attempt at no posting, no notifications and no scrolling and break it off. I might make it through the whole month easily after a couple of days of getting used to it. It might make me feel more productive or I might just find other ways to waste my time. We will find out. I will be back on the 1st of June with a report if I stick with it.
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