What do you learn when you live 4 months without social networks?
Social Media OFF: a radical lifestyle experiment
After the results, conclusions and discoveries at the end of Social Media OFF, these last weeks I have worked on what I learned from the experiment of disconnecting from social media for four months.
When I decided to leave social networks, it was only for a month, at the beginning. It seemed exciting after so many years connected. Why quitting social media? Will you lose opportunities? Will something change? Are you sure about the decision?
To this day I’m still not sure if having returned to social networks has been a successful action. I still have many doubts. Disconnecting from social media has been a great success for me.
Disconnecting from social media: Social Media OFF — the experiment
There are many questions that I continue to formulate today. However, after the research, I am 100% convinced that you can live without using or be on social media. This experience individually is powerful, because getting away from the flow helps you to be willing to accept whatever comes. After all, we don’t need even half of what this connected world gives us and makes us believe that it is essential. After all, we don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we’re going, or even how we’re going. How then can we know how to extract the value of the noise to use as an impulse in our profession or company?
The point is that most think they are doing well.
False.
After the Social Media OFF experiment and the disconnecting from social media entirely, I am rethinking some areas.
- Communication: I don’t see any sense in communicating to communicate. The mere fact of always having to appear so nobody forgets you. I don’t think so. If when you perform you generate positive impact, it will be difficult for them to remember you.
- Marketing: the best way to do it is to show the results of the work we do every day. Without being bulky, without being pedantic. When you stop thinking about marketing, and you focus on charming your client, magic happens. You don’t need so much promotion for your work or business.
- Messages: you don’t need to say more than it is. The question is not to attract, and the problem is only to show the result of the work.
- Content: create content not to please, not to capture, not to convince. Not content to disturb, promote, educate or make uncomfortable.
- Platforms: same content on same platforms bores you and even myself. The freshness of resources distributed according to the nature of the platform.
- Followers: most users today just read Tweets, barely stop at Facebook posts, don’t look at each photo or video on Instagram. When you pay attention, in most cases, it’s not who you would like. What is the point of following people who might be “appropriating” your time?
- Attention: every day there’s less attention, we are all more selective, but — connecting with the point above — we still don’t value thing. We connect to too many sources, too many professional contacts, too many subscriptions, pages or influencers.
Isolated and with social networks
It’s possible and not very difficult. The advantage of isolating yourself from this whole story is that you can focus on living your life (and not someone else’s). Develop your work with great skill. Dedicate more time to your children. Use resources to grow.
None of this goes against being human. You can not follow anyone, not read any tweets, not enter social networks every hour and have no WhatsApp and you can still be a person who strives to help others.
The key to getting disconnected from social media and continuing working them is to dedicate time every week or every two weeks. In that time you interact with clients, community or friends, answer questions and make things easier. The remaining time, enter and do the work (professionally) that you have to do when you finish leaving social networks without being distracted or the least.
What would I say based on what I am doing myself:
- Do not read any tweets.
- Do not look at any Facebook post.
- Skip the Instagram timeline.
- Do not stop at the feed on LinkedIn.
- Ignore Snapchat’s funny videos.
- Enter once a week to social networks.
- When for professional reasons your work is closely linked to the digital world. Use a workflow like this one.
- Interact only in the time allowed for it.
Social media is not “free time” it’s “lost time.” Disconnecting from social media is something you could consider.
You’re not for invisible people.
Another key to the Social Media OFF experiment of living without social networks is that it teaches you that you don’t have to be there and things don’t change. Most of the population won’t miss you. However, here comes the decisive factor. A small number of people will miss you. Those are the people you have to work for, ignore the rest.
What has disconnecting from social media taught me?
Six main learnings from Social Media OFF when disconnecting from social media:
1. No one better than myself
“The desire to win, the desire to be successful, the urge to reach your absolute potential … these are the keys that will open the door to personal excellence” — Confucius.
When there’s no one to compare to when no one gives you approval through a comment. Then you can do it yourself. I have realized that you shouldn’t listen to anyone other than your intuition and the five most important people in your life.
Without social networks, unconsciously, you live without approval, or reaffirmation, because you have no one who will say if what you have said/done is good or not. Who cares?
2. Finding a better me
In social networks, everyone has an opinion. They are all experts in various fields. In one way or another, you end up being infected by those “opinions.” When you live without social networks, the only help you can receive is the one you seek. If you decide not to look for it, you will not have resources, nor noises that will dictate what you can do and what you can’t do. You will have the opportunity to stop sharing with other people and get to know yourself better.
3. Grow in silence
If you don’t have to be continuously communicating what you are doing, what you are going to do and what you have done, nobody will know. Yes, maybe it’s not a great benefit. Unless it is because even if you don’t communicate it, you will not stop doing it. Therefore, you will not stop growing; only the rest will not know. It’s not necessary; the result will speak (today or tomorrow) for you.
Read books, life experiences, experiments, business, projects, education, achievements, failures, etc. You will learn, you will grow, you will win, knowing that you do it for you and not for showing it to the world.
4. Real friends
That’s what you’ll have when you stop relating to Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp or derivatives. You will start to have more personal contact with people, and you will appreciate the moments together a lot more. And you will do more with them, including family. You will share more experiences.
It’s not necessary to talk about the tranquility of going to a place and not having to take ten photos of each angle of the restaurant. True?
5. You will be more present than ever
Because you don’t live in the country of “what is happening on the day of ________ on Facebook or Instagram” anymore. Nor will you live anchored to “what did _____ say on Twitter” or “What will be the video of ________ today on YouTube.”
Those facts mean that you will be waiting to enjoy every moment of the 24 hours of each of your days. Good exchange, right?
6. You will develop a healthier relationship with yourself
Having zero digital commitments will help you to be closer to yourself. You will realize that you are you and that if you want something to happen, you will have to make it happen yourself. Compassion, empathy, and treatment will be healthier because you won’t have to be crushed to get more than _______ or ________.
7. I didn’t lose my job
No, I didn’t, even if you devote yourself to marketing and the digital economy as I do. Because if you have to use social networks professionally, go ahead, go, do it, generate results. The disenchantment is not in using them professionally; it is in using them personally. If you were honest with yourself, the reality slap of this point would be sharp.
Conclusion Social Media OFF Experiment
Disconnecting from the digital world and disconnecting from social media is enriching. Precisely because when you disconnect from one world you connect with another, which depends on the lifestyle you lead.
I wish I could advise you (in an undesirable way) to dedicate two or three weeks to an experiment of this kind, Social Media OFF in your way. That would be the test of whether something like this works or not.
[This article appeared first on isragarcia.com]
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Isra Garcia = 55 clients, 44 businesses advised, 398 speakings, 3.366 posts, 24 projects, 6 books, 380 lectures, 6 companies, 16 adventures, 23 experiments, ∞ failures. So far…
Marketer. Advisor. Speaker. Writer. Educator. Impresario. Principal at IG. Blogger. Entrepreneur. Disruptive innovation. Digital transformation. High-performer and a lifestyle experimentalist.
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