Monday, April 27, 2009

Social Networking: When Does it Become Too Much?


Seems I've stumbled into a lot of conversations lately that begin the same way.

"I can't keep up with all I have to do. The frustration paralyzes me."

Last week I blogged about it in a post titled "Stuck in a Rut?" It wasn't long before AJ picked up on it at her Always Juggling blog too, in a post that addresses social networking, and how hard it is to keep up with what we perceive as commitments.

Well, this week I'm determined to sort through my commitments. I'm slicing and dicing them to see what's critical and what has become nothing more than a fun way to waste time. So far, I've concluded that I can live without most social networking tools except LinkedIn and Twitter. For now, at least, I plan to pull back from the others.

I haven't taken the Facebook leap yet and I'm glad I didn't. It sounds like something that I would end up liking way too much. I might forget that I have real work to accomplish.

It's interesting how basic it is to take a step back and just breathe. Who knows, I might even find time for gardening this week. Sort of reminds me of a tv commercial I love, where a twenty-something guy is describing an awesome sight--this gold and pink explosion of color across the sky--as if he'd never seen such a thing before. The older guy with him throws him this little smirk and says, "Yeah. It's called morning."

Backing off of social networking feels a little like seeing my first sunrise. I plan to enjoy it.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah...I hate Twitter; it is useless at this stage for me and Facebook is evil. I don't even play all the games etc., but it still sucks time like an errant clock. Now I am faced with decisions!

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  2. Good advice, Chef! I guess I'm guilty of spending much time on twitter and other social networking sites other than Squidoo.. Like most kids do, I love playing games on facebook, well answering those quiz. Now I'll be more taking everything as it is. :)

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  3. Some great advice on taking a step back and breathing! I'm taking a rather long breather in a couple of weeks, going to be gone for a couple of months at least. Though I intend to do some blogging and plenty of tweeting, I doubt I'll have much time to maintain my lenses. Though having a good bunch of them already means choosing to promote one or 2 of them a week is easy without too much repetition.

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  4. Actually - I manage facebook by getting my tweets sent there automatically. Other than that it's a simple matter of dealing with responses.

    But I do agree about prioritizing. Very important. And nobody can do it for you, you have to figure your own things out.

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