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Over the last few months I have battled my mental health like never before. Whilst a global pandemic may be the obvious cause, I began to realise that it was much deeper than that.
My main source of communication, connection, news and opinion was social media, and it was bringing me down. Not only would it add fuel to the negativity but was clearly a compulsive habit.
Checking the apps on the way to the restroom in the middle of the night, seeing a message about work, and a political post that upsets you is not what you need for a restful nights sleep. It was one such night I recognised I needed to change something.
Thing is, with a growing personal brand online, a large following and multiple content streams, how on earth could I escape?
The birth of our new son changed my mindset. I wanted to be a happy and healthy dad, I wanted to help him grow up in a connected world as a grounded person. I wanted to right the wrongs I'd inflicted on my older children where I was distracted, consumed, stressed and often not present. This was an opportunity to build a new relationship and restore others.
I'm a list guy, so here's how I did it:
For one month I removed all social media apps from my smartphone. It was the phone that was one of the biggest contributors to my habitual checking. If I could survive without any of the apps for a month that would force me at least to use social within set times via my PC/laptop which would be far less convenient.
The first few days were unusual with many times the family asking "did you see X" or "I've sent you it on messenger". But once we all got used to the fact Dad was no longer using social on his phone, the language changed, and I didn't miss it at all.
That month has now become several, and I will never install FB, Instagram, LinkedIn or others on my phone again. (Nor log into their web apps).
Facebook and Instagram were the two most blurred lines when it came to my personal and business life. I was seen as a personal brand who was accessible 24/7 via comments and messages. There were no boundaries and people felt it OK to add my family and friends.
Therefore, I immediately converted my Instagram to a business account, changing its name, removing personal posts and of course removing the app and message notifications.
Then I deleted over 1000 friends on Facebook to only 90 members of my immediate family and close friends. It was difficult as there were "reasons" to stay connected to so many people, but if I was going to come off social, or at minimum separate business and personal I was going to need to make some tough decisions.
I then recorded a podcast and shared it with the community. This explained the journey I was going on, and I was very heartened by the response in my inbox.
The podcast episode I recorded
Finally, I updated the business page, and began to only show up during set times, through the business page within the community. This means I can continue to represent the brand, whilst creating clear expectations and drawing that line in the sand.
I am lucky enough to have a wonderful team who understand our mission and love the business. Working on the business is as important as working in the business, so moderating conversations, checking social inboxes, designing graphics, scheduling posts, analysing statistics and more need not be my responsibility. We promoted Larissa to Social Media Manager and Creative Lead, and she's already blossomed within months.
Our branding looks fantastic, we post regularly on our business social channels, and we are seeing an increase in consumption and engagement. All this whilst my own personal day-to-day involvement with social media has reduced to near zero!
Sometimes I get inspired and want to share something with the community I believe would be helpful. Having set logging onto social media as a no-go for me, I am able to use our social scheduling software instead to create all the posts I want without seeing any other distracting posts.
Larissa can review them and schedule them for relevant times and I can carry on about my day knowing I've shared what was on my mind, but I didn't go down the rabbit hole.
Muscle memory is a thing and several months later I still start typing in "fac" or "twi" or "news.sk..." into my browser toolbar. Literally for no reason other than it was a habit I formed over years and 20 minutes would pass before I escaped whichever site had loaded in front of me.
I did it twice this morning whilst writing this post! For those moments when I am thinking I sub consciously open a tab from the keyboard and start writing in distracting URLs.
The simplest solution I had without full on blocking access was to put an interrupt in my way. Distract me not is an add-on for my browser where I can input the URLs I want to block and what message I want to appear in their place.
Whilst disabling the plugin temporarily is super easy it acts as enough of an interrupt that I have to *think* about what I am doing. This allows me to check the behaviour, question my reasoning and 99% of the time go back to what I was doing.
On my phone the process was permanent by removing the apps, but I took a step further adding them to my DNS block list via DNS66, so I wasn't tempted in a moment of weakness to use the web apps!
Whilst blocking can be circumvented, it acts as a pattern interrupt enough to break the flow.
Ever felt like you need to be on every social platform? Same! So having put up with LinkedIn spam for years closing that account was a pleasure. I didn't generate much in the form of leads or traffic from that resource so placing energies there seemed pointless. I took the same action with other platforms we had signed up for or extra brand pages we had created for sub brands that we didn't need.
KISS (Keep it simple stupid) is such a good acronym, and I was the one who'd been stupid. I'd created so many accounts, brands and pages there was NO way a whole team could effectively manage our social presence let alone me as an individual!
Social media is designed to keep you hooked, and I believe the mainstream platforms have created a monopoly on our attention. Compulsive checking, the buzz of engagement, feeling connected and let's not mention those compelling targetted advertisements.
Being connected and being able to express yourself are not at all bad things, but I've learned over time that when you are the product, and it is commercialised, the experience becomes unhealthy.
I've since moved my form of personal expression to the Fediverse meaning Facebook and Twitter have been replaced with Mastodon and Instagram with PixelFed.
Both are open source, self-hosted web apps that federate (connect) with other instances. You can then self-host your own or join an existing instance of like-minded individuals.
No one person controls all the data, and you have the ability to manage your own information. Most importantly there are no large corporate bodies influencing its direction or development or manipulating what you consume.
Bloody brilliant! But that's another post for another day!