TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

Guys, I have a confession. I'm a social media fiend. Okay moving on.

Now let me tell you a story about my day. This morning I got in my car to go to work and all of the sudden my good friend shows up and wants to have a chit chat with me about the Bachelor. No, I don't want to talk to her about the Bachelor. I hate that show. But she's all in my face and I don't want to be rude so I listen and I end up being super late for work. Then I'm in the middle of work when my sister calls up and says "Hey I just ate THE GREATEST burger for lunch. Let me describe it to you." Well, after a whole lot of interruptions, I get a whole lot of nothing done and I go home. I'm eating dinner with my darling husband when suddenly two random kids I haven't seen since high school are having an argument right outside my door about Obama. How ridiculous is this??!

Yeah, not a true story. But this is how digital life would be in real life. SOCIAL MEDIA HAS TAKEN OVER. Maybe this was just me and my terrible A.D.D. but it was time for something to change before I was completely swallowed up in foodgrams, Bachelor tweets, and political arguments. If I wouldn't put up with that in real life, why would I in my digital life? Enough was enough.

So I decided to make huge changes to my social media so I could better focus on my work and when I wasn't trying to work, I'd use my social media time to get inspired and motivated, not get caught up in pointless arguments. 

Change #1- Something needed to be done about my organization. Social media was haunting me everywhere I turned and it was hard to focus. I started to remove blogs (particularly blogs that I loved reading) from my Blogger feed and would instead subscribe on my Google Reader. Seems backwards right? Well, this gave me an opportunity to sort through blogs that had stopped posting, stopped inspiring me, or just plain stopped interesting me. Then I could separate my work from my play. When I got on to Blogger to write posts, I wasn't distracted by blog posts I wanted to read and I was able to focus on the task at hand. Then when I had the time to read posts, I could pull out my iPad, relax, and read some inspiring blogs on my lovely reader.

Much more time consuming was organizing my Pinterest. Oh so time consuming. But again I started to regularly unfollow people who posted content I wasn't interested in or didn't inspire me. Unfollow is such a harsh word though... Can I make it more professional and say unsubscribe? Oh well. It was simply taking up more of my time to go through pins I didn't care about to find ones that I really liked, not to mention there are some things people pin that I don't necessarily want to see every time I get online (I'm looking at you, "motivational" pictures for getting skinny). 

Then after I organized the following side, I organized my boards. I got rid of boards that had very little pins or were categories that weren't really benefitting me. I had previously spent a lot of time looking at the humor section just to give me a good laugh, but it quickly becomes a time waster and I knew that I could easily free up more time by not looking through grumpy cat memes. So I removed my humor board, my fitness board (because let's be honest, I never looked at it), and other boards that simply weren't helping me in any way. I renamed and organized pins into categories that really interested me and helped me with not only my work, but my life. Then as I moved forward, I only pinned things for the categories I had created and never strayed. Never ever. Now that I have that written down here, you all need to hold me to that.

Change #2- Focus on focusing. There's not a whole lot I can say here to tell you HOW I worked on my focus, I just did. I made sure that I was not using valuable time to check out my social media. It's one thing to check my Twitter while I wait for the bus, but it's another to stop working on a project to check what someone said on Facebook. If there are better things I can be doing,  things that will add to my life and help me progress, I should get off the social media and focus. And there's quite a long list of things in life that are a higher priority in social media. Now when I am at home (or better yet school), I make sure to avoid social media when there are better things to be done.

Change #3- Get inspired. Social media is home to hoards and hoards unnecessary drama and unimportant information. Who needs that? Even more, who needs that on a minute by minute basis??  So it was time to cut out that unnessariness and get inspired. Since I'd already unfollowed bloggers and pinners, why not unfollow people on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook? I'm on a roll. On Twitter and Instagram it's easy to unfollow people without feeling too guilty. Most of the time people don't notice and if they do and are offended, they are probably the ones that needed to be unfollowed most (seriously, please don't watch your stats like that). On Facebook, however, unfriending people leads to that awkwardness of them not being able to contact or follow you anymore. Rather than unfriending the uninspiring (or just plain annoying) I unsubscribe from their feed. Voila! Still friends but I don't have to hear anymore arguments about gun control. What was important was that I weeded out the negativity. The people themselves might not be negative, but they may bring out negativity in me. In other words, it's the old excuse of "It's not you. It's me."

Now it was time to follow people that inspire me. This is mostly just about Twitter and Instagram since, to me, Facebook has solely become a means of keeping in contact with people I actually know and want to share important life details with. On Twitter, however, I follow a lot more people who are, in a sense, my idols and people that motivate me to be who I want to be. I follow business consultants, emerging creative entrepreneurs, graphic designers, creative companies, and just plain wise people. 

Now when I log into Twitter, I see articles and quotes that motivate me and I get updates about cool products. No more "I hate studying" or "Getting dinner with the hubs" updates. Twitter has become a means of obtaining knowledge and finding more inspiration for my work. Similarly, I follow a lot of creatives on Instagram who post pictures of projects they are working on, cool logos, and awesome interior design. Goal for this year- Don't start following anyone who won't positively effect my life and thoughts. Once again, it's your job to make sure I hold to that.

Welp. Now that I have gotten organized and focused, I have taken advantage of social media so it can inspire and motivate me! I really feel that it is adding to my work now. And even when I completely fail and waste too much time scrolling through my Twitter feed and checking each and every link mentioned, I know that I will in some way expand my knowledge or leave me feeling uplifted.

Has social media taken control of your life? How are you using it to your advantage?

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