Social media — bring the focus back on track

Are you feeling tired and unmotivated all of the time? Did you wonder why it might be happening? Don’t you think you are focusing on too many things simultaneously and not giving enough attention to your tasks?

Distractions bother you the most. So I will explain the process of decluttering thoughts and focusing on things that matter.

A week before Xmas, I deleted all social media apps from my phone as I wanted to get rid of avoidable distractions.

Often, when checking Facebook or Instagram, I sometimes get lost in scrolling through a stupid string of posts and fake or exaggerated news, which was only wasting my time and not bringing anything valuable into my life.

Getting rid of these apps is the best thing I could do for myself. Firstly,

it saves lots of time,

which I use for much more productive stuff, for example, reading or listening to books, morning yoga flow, talking to my family and friends over the phone or spending more quality time with my better half. Secondly,

it reduces distractions that take away focus,

resulting in higher motivation to get more things done faster than expected, making me feel better. Lastly, which I found most important,

it creates time to dive into a valuable state of boredom,

bringing out great ideas like this blog creation, for example, in my experience.

Many researchers say that humans are not able to multitask. When you do, you switch your attention from one task to another while not paying enough attention to any of them. See the video below with Chris Bailey's talk. Chris is a productivity analyst and explains how the state of our attention determines the state of our lives.

Switching your attention to a maximum of one thing at a time and avoiding distractions will make you feel better. From my experience, deleting social media apps from my phone and learning to focus on important stuff benefits me in many ways. Let’s face it; initially, social media was meant to bring people together. Instead, it often pushes “friends” away, strengthens social polarisation, and becomes a place for public bragging about things that are not even reasons to brag about to people you don’t even talk to.

If social media is a place you get your news from, it may be a great time to switch to a newsreader, Reeder5, for example, which I highly recommend. It lets you read and save for reading later the stuff you are interested in and won’t fill your head with typical Facebook nonsense.

Another benefit worth mentioning is precious this days privacy. When you stop using social media apps, you will stop sharing your private information. So instead, you will keep close relations only with people you genuinely care about while avoiding nosey people. Win-win.

To complete my final thought, I will leave you with social activist E. Roosevelt's quote,

"Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people."

Thanks for visiting.

Bye for a week!