Here I am one week into my 60-day social media sabbatical, and I must say, so much pressure has been take off of my shoulders!
You see, I run two Instagram pages, four Facebook pages, two Twitter pages, two LinkedIn profiles, and then some. The “need” to keep them all updated daily and to make sure my phone stayed at my fingertips so that I could respond quickly to every inquiry was a down right travesty.
I started working my way to unplugging from the world through my phone about two months ago when I began practicing falling asleep and leaving my phone on the other side of the room. And for the most part, my sleep has been 10x better because of this. But at the start of this year, I’ve been challeneged to take 60 days to silence my interactions on social media (unless it was ciritical to the success of my businesses).
If I could be honest, the stress level of my soul increased tremendously! I stated thinking, What if a client needs to reach me? What if I miss a major story? What if a potential client isn’t reached becasue I’m not keeping an eye on my pages? Honestly, I started thinkning of every reason why I did NOT need to step away from social media. My head filled up of excuses and not sound reasons and it was pitiful. I felt my emotions changing because I felt as if the challenge would be too hard. It was then that I realized…I needed to go into social silence for my sanity!
I downloaded a time tracker app just to see how much time I actaully spent working on projects bacsed on the time I spent saying I was working and was actaully getting lost in the “scroll down” sauce of my social platforms. I hate to admit it, but in an 8 hour work day, at least 3 hours were wasted…scrolling. As a self-employed millennial, that’s not surprising. But as a professional business owner, its terrible! I started thinking, I get the same amount of time in my day as Gary V., Richard Branson, Ryan Seacrest, or Lisa Nichols, wasting my time is why I am not getting further along than I am!
And all of a sudden, the thought of unplugging seemed more rewarding than worrying. I hired an lifestyle assistant to monitor my pages and to help me keep my life together (staying task oriented, not working too much and resting too little, etc.). As much as it pained me to release control over a piece of my business life, I knew it would pay off. And so far, this week away has been great! If I’m missing something, oh well, perhaps it was meant for me to miss. If someone needs to contact me, hopefully they followed my “farewell” post.
The truth is, my well-being in all areas of my life is my priority in 2017. I cannot pour into the lives of others running on empty. I cannot strive towards my fullest potential giving half effort. More than that, I cannot live the life I’ve been so blessed to live, forgetting to cherish the moment.
60 days from now, I’ll be in a completely different headspace. And for me, the silence of now will fuel the noise (good noise) I’m preparing to make later.
Originally published at medium.com