SOCIAL MEDIA DISTRACTIONS

 SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has become such a huge part of our daily lifestyle. I remember when growing up I barely had access to the television. My brother and I would be fighting over the remote most of the time and the rest was riding bikes with friends was my past time. Not for this generation. They are more focused on catching up on how many LIKES they have got or who has the most popular post. I barely can get my son to discuss about his school day without him watching his gadgets while he does so. It has gotten out of control!

Here are some of the things that we need to be really evaluating about our social media and we need to control it.

• SCROLLING WORLD - We waste too much time scrolling to endless hours of social media - what are we really learning. It's fine for some leisure activities and entertainment. But beyond that, reading a book is priceless learning. 

• TIME WASTERS - The first time I read Stephen Covey's, Seven habits of highly effective people, one of the things he says is if you're spending too much time either on social media or watching tv, you are wasting too much time.

• He believes that you could use that time to read a book or learn a new skill. There are always going to be ways to productively work on things. 

• LACK OF TRACKING - It was such a simple statement but I started to realise how much time I was actually wasting. For example, in the morning when I get up, I would take my phone and start browsing through it, and you don't realize it but you end up spending on an average 30 to 40 minutes a day just watching Instagram. Then you know something is wrong. 

• ACTION PLAN - After realising this, I started consciously tracking my time. I was losing 2-3 hours a day on social media! This was excluding tv time, that just blew my mind. I made an immediate resolution to subscribe to a book service like audible and resolved to read business books for the next 30 days and challenged myself to read as many as I could. 

• GAINED MORE KNOWLEDGE - I had completed 20 books in the last 30 days, it felt like such an amazing accomplishment. It's totally about the choices we make with that time and time is money.So don't waste it on unnecessarily talking to people talking too much or gossiping, it's fun you know i get it you love talking to people you love seeing your social media you feel good about it, but put a time limit on it. 

• BEING PRODUCTIVE - The feel good is not being productive, and it's not giving you a return. Here are some of the questions you need to ask yourself, 

  • When was the last time you learnt a new skill?

  • Which new business/technical book have you read related to your field of interest or career?

  • What if you spend 3 hours a week doing an online course on the topic of your interest?

Here is my YouTube video explain this and my other time management techniques in detail ":)

DISTRACTIONS 

Distractions. They're constantly around us. We are surrounded by them. It's our day-to-day lifestyle, and the way to get rid of them, is to start tracking them. 

• Start tracking how much time you spend on them? 

• What exactly are you doing that is distracting you?

• What are the activities? Can you make a list of them? 

• Are you tracking them? 
  

• EMAILS - Try to avoid looking at your emails and keep a specific time for it and stick to it. I noticed that personally, the amount of time I was wasting, and not just on social media, but on emails, chatting and on calls on a daily basis was around 3 hours! 

• TRACK YOUR TIME - The moment I realised this, I started tracking exactly what I was doing and made a list of all the activities. I started doing this on a weekly basis. Generally, I would say track your productivity, but actually tracking the time you spent on distractions is MORE important. 

• OUTCOME - Within months, I saw an immediate change and I dropped the amount of time I was spending on distractions by 40%. This was a huge deal for me, I was getting more done, and my projects and work went soaring high. I stopped procrastinating on my emails and wasting hours pondering about a discussion or call I had the day before. 

• WORKSHEET/ PLANNER - I'm not saying you shouldn't relax and definitely should take breaks. It's important to relax, meet up with friends and have fun from time to time. The only advice I have is how much time you spend on it matters, if you see that it's really high in any particular week or month, it's time to track the time and put a tracker sheet in place.