Twitter-Free Tuesday

I love social media, I really do. I go pretty deep into a number of social media services. I've been lucky to build real relationships, get work and participate in cool projects because of social media. But with so many social media outlets, it's easy to spend far too much time on 'social' pursuits that can turn out to be, well, kind of antisocial after a while. 

I've decided to make each Tuesday Twitter free. I'm doing this to not only free up more time during the work week and concentrate more, but also to pull back and gain a little more perspective on what social media outlets really provide value versus the ones that only fill space with more noise. 

I'm curious to know if anyone else has done any social media "fasting." Did it work? What did you learn? I would love to hear your story. Shoot me an email. You can also hit me up on Twitter @martinize, any day but Tuesday, of course.

Update on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 02:15PM by Jeffrey Martin

Here are some of my notes after my first Twitter-free Tuesday.

• This is hard. No kidding, right? But as a community member, both digitally and physically, I did have to make a few Facebook posts and reply to a few tweets. So technically, yesterday wasn't Twitter-free. No updates were personal, all were business or community oriented.
• Twitter was certainly the hardest social media outlet to ignore. YouTube, Reddit, Foursquare, Spotify, Google+ and Facebook were much easier. Some specialized services didn't even register.
• Some people I only interact with through a social media service. 
• Some individiuals I can only reach through a social media service.
• The steady ping of the smartphone and the push to email alerted me to various social media happenings, even without having to fully participate.

It can be pretty hard to completely disconnect from social media. It was tougher to ignore the email and notifications from various services than dealing with any "withdrawl symptoms." Hopefully next week will be a little easier with a little more preparation.