How To Get Off Facebook And Take Back Your Life

I’ve heard many different ways that people have tried to get off Facebook and yeah, you can install one of those programs on your computer that tracks your time and the websites you go to and at the end of the week gives you a rundown of what you’ve done, where you’ve been and how long you spent there.

Watch the video or read the transcription:

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Quite frankly, that sounds depressing. I’ve never tried it, I’m not that interested. I might just for the sake of experiment later but right now, I’m not here to talk about that. What works for me is one, treating it as a treat. It’s not the first thing I open up. I also have some other policies in place.

For instance, I don’t chat. Chat is off, I’m invisible. I don’t read big gigantic blocks of text. I hide people that post 75/80/90% of stuff I don’t care about. They’re hidden, they’re not on my wall. I don’t go to individual people’s pages. I hide all the ad stuff just as soon as it comes up.

It basically gets down to the list of the 15 people I want to see from every day. And if it’s any more than you know, a quick blurb, a cute picture, or a very intriguing sounding video, that’s it. I don’t use a timer any more, but mentally if I’m on there for more than five minutes, that’s it, I gotta be done. Shut it down. There’s no more need to be on there. Say your happy birthdays, say your hellos and be done.

Basically it just gets to the point when you start treating Facebook as a tool to use as opposed to a reward system or a time occupier it just becomes another screwdriver. It becomes another tool in your toolbox, in your Internet array of reference materials that you can use or not use. No big deal.

But if you keep treating it as a place where you are constantly engaging with friends or getting involved with drama or whatnot… Reading political opinions or goofy stuff like that, it’s just going to keep sucking you back in. Over and over. It’s kinda like when I used to watch the news.

I don’t really watch TV that much any more except for kids’ stuff or really specific shows. I just can’t stand the news when I got back and watch it. It doesn’t provide any type of stimulation or entertainment. It’s more annoying than anything, especially if the kids are around.

So you just have to get to the point where it’s not that you disdain or completely and utterly hate Facebook, but that you’ve removed all emotion from it and it has become a source of quick, efficient contact.

And that’s it. Treat it business-like. Don’t let it weigh on you, and at the end of the day have something else to do that is productive. Replace your unproductive Facebook time with something else productive. What that is for you, I don’t know. For me it’s creating products, blogging, emailing, audio, videos, you name it. Something that is more aligned with producing stuff instead of consuming stuff. Cogitate on that a little bit. Get off Facebook, take a little bit of your life back, alright? Good luck!