One of my favorite yet most difficult things about blogging is social media — specifically Twitter. I love Twitter. I love the conversations I always get to have. How it really helps me to get to know other bloggers and them to get to know me. I love how it continues the conversations off our blogs. I just LOVE always having a place to go when I want to talk or ask a question. I’ve gotten closer with some of my now bffs BECAUSE of Twitter. Blog-wise, it’s a source of a good amount of traffic.

However, I have a hard time balancing the social media aspect of my blog sometimes. I want to be present. I want to talk and  get to know people. I want to be a part of the community. At this point, though,  I’m addicted to Twitter. I’m always refreshing it on my phone and always have Tweetdeck open on my computer. The result has been a plummeting level of productivity. Like, really really badly. I’m reading way less and being less efficient as I write  my blog posts. It’s become a problem that I’ve been trying to tackle.  I’ve started not really going on Twitter during the weekends and shutting down later at night as well as close Tweetdeck when I work on my blog posts. But I need to do more.

What is it that I am going to do to try and help myself get back to a good balance regarding social media?

I’m going on a social media diet for a week — so I guess sort of like a crash diet really?

For 1 week I will be limiting myself to 1 hour per day on Twitter — split however I choose. I’ll be keeping very close track of every single minute because they add up — I KNOW they do when I’m jumping on Twitter to refresh every 15-20 minutes and spend 5 minutes on there.

Why am I doing this/what do I hope to accomplish?

- Become more aware of the mindless Twitter refreshing and just how much time I’m really wasting (not talking about good conversation – just the refreshing and not talking or following drama that I don’t participate in.)

- To combat my Twitter refreshing tick on my phone

- To see how productive I can really be and hope that I’ll want that to be the norm.

- Remember that the world will probably not implode if I don’t answer right away or participate in every conversation.

- Get some “quiet” time — sometimes honestly having SO many opinions or seeing a lot of negativity really effects me and I need to step away.

- Ultimately I want to help myself to regain a good balance and realize how much time I waste and rather focus on quality conversation while I’m on Twitter.

Fears I have about doing this:

- That I will be so disconnected
- That I’ll miss out on good, fun conversations
- People will forget I exist
- That I’ll fail in the first day and forever be addicted to Twitter and my life will fall apart (I’m being REALLY dramatic here hah)

What do I plan to do during this week?

- get blog posts written for when I’ll be in BEA and maybe get further ahead
- do all the annoying behind the scenes things I hate doing (review archive updating, putting reviews on Goodreads, formatting old posts I still haven’t fixed from when I moved to WordPress in March 2012).  That was one of my bookish resolutions for this year so I need to get crackin’ on that!
- clean the house
- indulge in some of my other hobbies
- get ready for BEA!!
-  comment on blog posts!!
- Work on my super secret project that I referenced here.
- READ READ READ (that’s what always gets the short end of the stick because of my Twitter addiction…which is ironic because the only reason I’m on Twitter is because of my BOOK BLOG)

So what happens after the week?

Every day I plan on writing  just a paragraph each day of what I got done for the day, how I feel and what not and then I’ll take that and really evaluate and see how much more I got done and how my general mood is after the week.  I’m hoping that it will help me to realize I don’t need to be on as much and help strike a better balance in my social media usage for the blog. I know I’ll still probably be on a lot because I truly enjoy it but hopefully not as much!  I’ll probably end up sharing the results of my little experiment. I also will probably be evaluating the other areas where I mindlessly waste time on Twitter.

What about you guys? Do you find yourself addicted to social media? How do you strike a balance? All tips will be welcome! Also, feel free to join me!!