Wake me up when September ends: Facebook detox attempt

Life
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Here’s another run at trying to minimise social media use. My bag of tricks:

  • A defined set of rules:
  1. No browsing of FB (or Twitter) unless someone sends me a link (in which case I only read the post)
  2. No posting or commenting at all
  • A public commitment: this thread plus a cryptic post on my FB profile of the Green Day song :slight_smile:
  • Beeminder: a goal to track the number of unread notifications. It’s a simple do-more goal where if I open the notification box the number of unread notifications will become zero and thus I derail
  • Other software: already had a Chrome add-on that removes the feed and use Screen Time to bug me when I try to browse unwanted sites.
  • (Last but not least) Accountability: Will be doing periodic updates here, sign-up :slight_smile:

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Extending the ban to Twitter which seems to be a replacement drug for aimless browsing :smiley:

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First 24 hours went quite well with a single FB visit because I was sent a link and minimal (post ban) Twitter browsing. Switched to book reading as a replacement habit for the bus ride :slight_smile:

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So far so good. A single browsing session on FB so far (without checking notifications), but several on Twitter. Some increased beeminder forum activity may have been noticed. :smiley:

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Still haven’t checked notifications (the Beeminder goal works), but there has been some late night browsing and a couple of posts/comments due to a bad habit of debunking stuff on the internet. :slight_smile:

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12 Days in, 41 unread notifications, a couple of posts and less than 10 comments. So far, so good. :slight_smile:

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September is ending with the notifications counter at 99 or so (seems like FB won’t show a higher number sometimes). Browsing time has been higher lately than in the first couple of weeks, along with occasional comments (but no posts).
Will definitely reset and restart the notifications goal at the end of the month, the productivity/mental benefits have been quite noticeable.
Unsure if I need to be more strict on browsing sessions or commenting. TBD.

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Detoxification seems to be in a stable state.

  • Checking 100 (or so) notifications proved that most of them where meaningless (e.g. like and comments that I had seen while browsing anyway)
  • I haven’t bothered to inform people about a post-less month. Didn’t think it was worthy I guess :smiley: (this thread might serve as alternate though).
  • Beeminder goal on notifications has been reset for another month.
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