April 20, 2015 at 07:55How to spend less time on social networks
An Internet user spends on social networks an average of almost 2 hours daily *. Moreover, this time is growing every year. If you are not ready to completely abandon social networks, but want to free up some of your time, first you need to separate the flies from cutlets and figure out how this time is spent. All activity in social networks can be divided into 3 types:
1. Communication - the creation, maintenance and development of relationships. It is dictated by our natural needs for communication and interaction. Productivity depends on how much this communication enriches you and others, improves your relationships with important people.
2. Media. Almost all groups in social networks, as well as many personal pages are nothing more than media. It is about creating content (photos, videos, text materials) and posting it in order to acquire an audience and influence it (commercial, political and / or personal). The created promotion channel is sold, rented out (advertising) or used for personal purposes of the owner. If you purposefully act in social networks, like the media, for you this is a productive activity. Reposts of other people's content are not media activity. In this case, you simply become part of someone else’s promotion channel.
3. Content Consumption. This is a viewing of news feeds, chronicles, "walls", etc. This is where most of the time is usually spent, and quite unproductive. Everything that we consume can be curious, useful and necessary. The curious is all that satisfies our curiosity and entertains us. Useful we will call what, in our opinion, may be useful in the future. What we need is what we need now. Depending on the person and the situation, the information necessary for one may turn out to be useful only for someone, but simply curious for another. For example, this article may be necessary for a person who is now seriously engaged in self-organization. For someone who complains about the lack of time, but thinks to do it “someday later”, it will be just useful. And for those who did not think about it at all - the information may, at best, seem curious.
What is informational garbage
Information that possesses at least one of the signs:
a) Does not apply to your goals in any way
b) Is outside the scope of our influence
c) Negatively affects you
A typical example of informational garbage is all kinds of news (not only in social networks). This may seem strange, but if you think about it, you will see that they often satisfy all three criteria.
What to cut off
1. Consumption of informational garbage (now you know how to determine it).
2. Consumption of any content other than necessary (in the context described above).
3. Communication with people and interaction with channels that broadcast informational garbage (if they are not cut off, they will still push this information into you).
The first and second restrictions can be entered sequentially. The third is in parallel.
If you spend the released time and energy on matters that are important to you, your efficiency will increase. In this case, you absolutely will not lose anything.
* GlobalWebIndex statistics
1. Communication - the creation, maintenance and development of relationships. It is dictated by our natural needs for communication and interaction. Productivity depends on how much this communication enriches you and others, improves your relationships with important people.
2. Media. Almost all groups in social networks, as well as many personal pages are nothing more than media. It is about creating content (photos, videos, text materials) and posting it in order to acquire an audience and influence it (commercial, political and / or personal). The created promotion channel is sold, rented out (advertising) or used for personal purposes of the owner. If you purposefully act in social networks, like the media, for you this is a productive activity. Reposts of other people's content are not media activity. In this case, you simply become part of someone else’s promotion channel.
3. Content Consumption. This is a viewing of news feeds, chronicles, "walls", etc. This is where most of the time is usually spent, and quite unproductive. Everything that we consume can be curious, useful and necessary. The curious is all that satisfies our curiosity and entertains us. Useful we will call what, in our opinion, may be useful in the future. What we need is what we need now. Depending on the person and the situation, the information necessary for one may turn out to be useful only for someone, but simply curious for another. For example, this article may be necessary for a person who is now seriously engaged in self-organization. For someone who complains about the lack of time, but thinks to do it “someday later”, it will be just useful. And for those who did not think about it at all - the information may, at best, seem curious.
What is informational garbage
Information that possesses at least one of the signs:
a) Does not apply to your goals in any way
b) Is outside the scope of our influence
c) Negatively affects you
A typical example of informational garbage is all kinds of news (not only in social networks). This may seem strange, but if you think about it, you will see that they often satisfy all three criteria.
What to cut off
1. Consumption of informational garbage (now you know how to determine it).
2. Consumption of any content other than necessary (in the context described above).
3. Communication with people and interaction with channels that broadcast informational garbage (if they are not cut off, they will still push this information into you).
The first and second restrictions can be entered sequentially. The third is in parallel.
If you spend the released time and energy on matters that are important to you, your efficiency will increase. In this case, you absolutely will not lose anything.
* GlobalWebIndex statistics