Day 74: Minimize Your Time On Facebook in 6 Easy Steps

What: Facebook

Why: Does facebook take up a lot of your time? Do you find yourself spending countless minutes or even hours, scrolling through facebook? Have you ever looked at a clock and thought “where did the time go?” and then realize you spent it all on facebook? Just like most things in life facebook can become an addiction. Are you spending too much time on it? Do you wish you spent less? Here are 6 tips on how to minimize your time spent on facebook.

How:
1. Don’t sign up for the games and applications – those useless games only take away time from doing something else that is much more important. If you want to play a game, grab a “real” friend and play a board or card game.

2. Limit the number of friends you have on facebook – the less friends, the fewer people to keep “tabs” on, and the fewer people to appear on your newsfeed. This may sound rude, but unfriend those who you have not talked to in years. If you have not contacted them or they have not contacted you, you probably will not miss each other. If someone needs to get a hold of you, they can always send you a personal message.

Some questions to think about:

• Do you know the person?
• What is your connection to them?
• Do you communicate with them regularly?

3. Don’t sign up for email notifications – if you have a smartphone, you will not get the annoying beep, alerting you that you received a new message or notification via email. People are becoming so dependent on their cell phones and anytime it beeps or rings, out of the purse or pocket it comes. If you can eliminate some of the disturbances, it is worth taking the step.

4. Don’t use facebook chat – if someone wants to tell you something, let them tell you via email, phone, cell phone, snail mail, etc.

5. Only go on facebook once a day – you have a choice! Some might think that facebook may control them, but in reality, they have 100% control over it – they just need to choose to not let it control them. Set limits for yourself. Go a day without going on facebook. Then a week. Then a month. Do whatever you need to do to not let facebook control your time.

6. Set your facebook to maximum privacy in your account settings and privacy settings. This prevents unnecessary content and people from hacking and seeing things you do not want them to see.

Confession of the Day: I have to admit that sometimes I find myself spending too much time on facebook – especially at night before I go to bed. Over the past few years I have tried to become more time sensitive when it comes to facebook and sometimes it takes just closing the computer and walking away. I do not have much of an issue anymore. I do appreciate social media and I think it has opened communication lines that we may not have opened otherwise. Facebook has helped me connect with people I did not think I would ever connect with again. Plus, it is very easy to quickly send someone a facebook message. Though the advantages are helpful, it can still take away valuable time that we could be doing something else with. I do not feel the need to do some of the steps above (nor do I participate in some of them), but whatever level you may be at and if you want to make some changes, hopefully these ideas will help. Living with less means taking inventory on what you spend the most time doing, what is taking away your time, and evaluating how you can have “more” in life being doing “less” of other things.

What do you enjoy most about facebook? What do you enjoy the least?