Minding Distractions

Well I guess I am on a roll here. 😁 I’ve been spending some time on Twitter lately, and it’s made me realize what a gigantic distraction it is. Not just it, but any social media. It’s so addictive, and once you’re bought in, it’s all the more difficult to ween away.

I abruptly (rage quit) Facebook in 2019. March 14th (Pi Day) to be exact. It totally totally sucked the first year or so for me, because I felt I basically abandoned all my online friends. However, I had most of them available through other channels/mediums, so it ended up not being such a huge deal. But still, there was anxiety over the ordeal.

Then there was Twitter. After I couldn’t get my fix from Facebook I started spending more time on Twitter. I mentioned I still deal with this, and am in fact actively dealing with now, hence this post. However, with Twitter, I view it more of a business and marketing vein than I did with Facebook. There’s a branding element to it. However, right now with all the politics it has gotten intense and it’s been a challenge.

The 2020 election along with the pandemic, gosh what a combo. Emotions run high and it’s tough to be able to resist reading the peanut gallery (not to mention, analyzing how terrible Twitter is at filtering bots) and seeing what everyone is saying.

There’s something to be said about simply reading comments and not being actively posting them. I feel I have gotten better at expressing opinions, or rather, seeing the futility of doing so. So, I try not to post or reply unsolicited to others' comments these days. In fact, I feel I have gotten pretty good at it.

It’s not that expressing opinions is bad, but it takes energy, and when you’re not expressing an opinion, you’re defending it. Because someone will inevitably disagree with it. Because human beings. That means as soon as you post, you’re on a timer to watch for a reply, and/or anticipating as such.

That further means you are drawing attention and focus on what could otherwise be done in your sphere of influence. In my world, that is building Starbeam One.

So, it’s evil. That might sound strong, but it’s how I view it. Much like getting into debt, but here it is debt of the mind. Social media is attention and focus debt that you must crawl your way out of whenever you touch it.

One last thought about the peanut gallery. In addition to avoiding the anxiety and “rush-chasing” of posting opinions, one thing that I have noticed is that if you read enough, your opinion is already out there. There is some knucklehead (bot or not) who has jumped on your thoughts and has posted them out there for the world to see. So, is it really worth all the trouble to further endanger your brand to post something out there when what you have in your head is already out there? Especially when it further endangers your time, energy, focus, and concentration on things that, you know, make money?

These days, I do gather to say: methinks not.