It occurred to me after nearly starting a fire the other day that I have a problem. I don’t know why it took me this long or why I needed to be alerted by such a dramatic incident to figure this out, but I have.
It all started back in June of 2006. I heard through the grapevine about this Dodgeball competitor called Twttr and, mostly because I wanted to see if it was really all that (I was a total Dodgeball nut), I signed up and started posting what wasn’t even called twitters, let alone tweets in those days. At first, I didn’t think too much about it. Then this happened:
On August 2, 2006, there was a small tremor in the SF Bay area – the first I’d felt since I moved there – and the fact that all the people on Twttr at the time felt it and reported on it together opened up a world of possibility for me. We all rejoiced. It was our early global warning system. This event brought us closer together. We had a service where we could nearly synchronously and publicly share our experience. How cool!
I spent the next 6 months telling everyone I knew about Twttr, which became Twitter sometime in the fall of 2006 (can’t recall the exact date) in support of the new service I had fallen head over heels in love with. Then SXSW Interactive 2007 happened and Twitter exploded. I blame Robert Scoble 
but it wasn’t actually a bad thing (though I did tell a couple of reporters that I didn’t like how Twitter was becoming a popularity contest all of a sudden). Twitter needed a big champion and next thing you knew, everyone was joining in droves. These were still early adopters by and large and the essence of that sharing (sometimes oversharing) culture was still there.
But something else started happening. As the conversations grew more numerous and deeper on Twitter, my blogging started to falter. First I went from one post per day to one post every couple of days. After a while, I dropped to a post a week. Everything I used to say on my blog – whether opinion or researched posts – went over to my tweets. And they were conversations instead of a post with comments. This wasn’t necessarily a negative thing as many of my posts were probably better off as conversations anyway, but slowly I abandoned my blog altogether, only posting once per month or every two months, which was not nearly frequent enough.
Twitter was great for helping me write my book. If I was getting stuck for good examples and case studies (not something one can just Google), I’d go to Twitter and ask. Usually I’d find really cool edge cases that hadn’t been used to death. I also watched companies like Zappos grow their activity on Twitter, which provided a better story for me than I had imagined. Twitter was also a wonderful place to go for support and encouragement. People telling me that I can do it. Friends helping me through break-ups and self-doubt. New followers encouraging me by telling me that they were looking forward to the end result.
I felt as if Twitter gave me family, friends, colleagues and a robust library of information all at once. Mostly it did. But something else was happening to me. I was becoming reliant on Twitter for everything. And, being a pretty good procrastinator, that everything was wonderfully distracting enough for me to get lazy. Really lazy. Like not change out of my comfies and sit on Twitter (and gMail) for the entire day and get nothing else done. I slipped from using Twitter to my professional and personal advantage (and giving back as much as possible to keep up my relationships) to Twitter being my crutch.
When I let the potatoes on the stove boil until the water was gone and become charcoaled because I lost track of time to my Twitter addiction last week, I realized I crossed that line.
So…I have put some rules in place for myself now. I can’t open Tweetdeck. At all. This service is just too good at pushing me all the information I need to continue in the addiction flow that keeps me from being productive or having a real life. If I’m around people, I don’t open Tweetie (on my iPhone) at all. I focus on who I’m with and if who I’m with checks their tweets, I mention it and I don’t use it as an excuse to check mine (the spiral of anti-social). I can check the web version of Twitter 2x per day…and the exception is if I post a question and need to have a bit of a conversation. When that conversation is over, I need to exit. I know I’ve been told to obsessively follow my @’s, my searches (Whuffie, wuffie, tara hunt, whuffaoke, etc.), but I don’t anymore. This may have me falling behind in places, but I lived for years before it existed and I still have Google Alerts.
It’s only been 4 days and I don’t feel any real withdrawal yet. I’ve been super productive. Finally got focused on a presentation I’ve been avoiding for a month. In 3 days, I created something I am proud of…without the assistance of tweeps. I went back to reading blogs and news and books and articles and googled stuff and feel my brain engaging again. I finished one book and have moved onto another that I’m excited about. I’ve written 3 blog posts (in 4 days). I feel calmer because I’m not absorbing the anger that is being shot back and forth between ‘sides’ of the healthcare debate. I spent more time with my dog, letting him chase squirrels for longer in the park. I cooked healthy meals for my son. I’ve been putting together that overdue outline for my book.
This is only the beginning. It’s not the fault of Twitter, either. It’s a tool. A great tool. An amazing, game-changing platform for connection and conversation. But it’s not a substitute for all the other stuff I was letting it be a substitute for. I’ll be taking French lessons, going on actual dates, working out on a regular schedule, working on cool new Montreal community projects, designing a conference, creating a series of deeper presentations, writing another book, meeting new people, hanging with my friends, spending time with my son (as much as he’ll allow, of course), taking my dog for more walks, reading a book a week, getting current with the news, going to movies, attending art exhibits, talking to old friends on the phone, writing short stories, meditating, keeping my house clean, traveling and all the other things I’ve been missing while letting myself fall into the allure of the ongoing Twitter party.
Oh…and Twitter isn’t the only thing I let distract me. gMail is also bad for me. I’m also limiting my access to that. Wish me luck. It won’t be easy.
GOOD LUCK!
Do I smell a book club? Required reading, social outings, human interaction…
Good for you Tara. It’s wonderful how quickly technology can move from enhancing your life to taking it over. I’m happy to see you are reclaiming some of it back. Your mind, soul and body will be the better for it. Thanks for sharing
oops sorry I meant wonderful how technology can enhance your life, amazing how quickly it can take it over. Need more coffee on the west coast here.
Tara,
I feel your pain. I’ve, on purpose, kept my Twitter apps to a minimum—not using Tweetdeck is a good start.
There’s a lot of research on how the human brain responds to rapid-fire video or computer stimuli, and how this stimuli can cause an addictive response in a lot of people. Hence, why video poker and video slot machines tend to be tightly regulated. Twitter dances a line between information source and this addictive stimuli, and I think there are a lot of people who simply don’t realize how dependent on that stimuli they are.
But, there’s also something about Twitter that I find kinda odd. Better than a lot of other services (Facebook, Myspace, etc.), Twitter allows for the easy collection of fans, aka, “followers.” It’s a gratifying experience to see fans grow in number, and it becomes a new type of celebrity. There’s a downside to Twitter celebrity, just as it is for actual celebrity. I have friends who have tens of thousands of followers, and it seems with every 1k of followers, they become more arrogant, less personal, and more paranoid of losing their followers. It’s not healthy for them, and it’s concerning for me as a friend.
Here’s a blog post I wrote about it a few months ago for Net Squared. http://bit.ly/157iNV
@sarah What a great post! My fave:
” I believe we’re all becoming compulsive, technology-enabled celebrity addicts. We don’t need your success to be determined by how good our service, mission, or product is. Who cares if our family or community members respect and trust us when thousands of followers confirm our social status? We are who they think we are, and we’ve learned the many ways we can “game” the social media status system so others have a better opinion of us.”
Wow…totally. It goes to the heart of value. I’ve always fought with the follower numbers. From the days that Twitter exploded on the SXSW 2007 scene and people started gaming for more followers, I cringed. Not only because I knew it would change the focus of Twitter (from conversation to popularity contest), but also because I knew I was susceptible to comparison with others. Thanks for writing that. I think you are bang on.
@Julie
Ya! Book club! Let’s do it! I’m reading Us and Them by David Berreby. Super eye opening stuff. Lots of fantastic questions about why we look at racial comparisons the way we do. And I have a stack of books here to get through. Let’s coordinate!
@esther
Thanks!
I’m really glad you’ve recognized your reliant behavior. Regardless of the name of the tool, we quickly reach the addictive point. I know you’ll be more productive and happier. Good work in identifying areas where you can improve. It’s not easy to make changes but you are already happy about it. Keep up the productivity!
Tara – I completely agree with you. I just spent the last three months in the Philippines as a Kiva Fellow and I didn’t have regular internet service. Couldn’t get online for days at a time. Couldn’t obsessively check anything. It was a tough first week of withdrawl…and then the strangest thing happened.
I started writing a lot. I wrote my blog posts offline (and inserted the hyperlinks when I was online). Easily wrote a post a day. I wrote other stories. I did goal-setting worksheets and exercises I had been wanting to do forever. I read books! Lots of them! Like 15 in one summer. Instead of sitting on the computer until I was falling asleep tired, I sat in bed and read for an hour or two most nights. I felt incredibly creative because I couldn’t shoot off little notes to people about things I saw, or felt or anything that was happening. I came to realize being online all the time not only decreases our productivity, it stunts our creativity.
I’m just back to the U.S. about 4 days now and swimming in online, because I missed it, and I do have so many people I’m wanting to connect with after being gone for so long and such a huge backlog of messages. But ultimately, I’m going to do what you are doing and table my engagements, focus on business and the things I need to do for me professionally and then reward myself with TweetDeck and check into gmail.
So thank you for this wonderful post. And I’m excited to see you again at TribeCon this October in New Orleans!
Best,
Sloane
Well done, Tara, and well-put!
What is Twitter, really? How would you sum up its REAL usefulness? Twitter is simply an instant, INTERACTIVE news service — global, public, 24/7, searchable and both mobile and Internet accessible. It’s NOT a source for hearing what people are having for lunch or that your clip-ons fell down a sewer grate.
What’s the future of Twitter content? What will continue and what will go away in tweets? No one really wants to know what you had for lunch. Really not. We do want to know what you thought about, or encountered, that might make a difference in the world. As Twitter matures, more and more ‘tweeters’ will start abandoning the empty-headed, frankly juvenile ‘novelty’ use of the service, censuring those who abuse it, and will only follow people who constantly and consistently (and conscientiously) contribute innovative, quality, low-frequency insights and links.
Help be a part of the evolution and make Twitter into cyberspace’s REAL all-encompassing instant, INTERACTIVE news and information service. (Although I suspect there will always be celebrities feeding the need for worship at a micro-level!)
http://tinyurl.com/mng26z
Totally agreed. I really enjoy writing blog posts (and now creating videos) more than I enjoy the piecemeal interaction on Twitter. Good to have you back.
-Erica
@Kerry
Thanks…this will take some discipline. As soon as I wrote this, I had a lump in my throat!
@Sloane
What a wonderful story and very inspirational to keep me focused on what I need to do! I really look forward to hanging with you IN REAL LIFE in New Orleans.
@Kevin
I think the vision for a mature twitter is a good one. It’s so darn good at producing instant gratification, it may be tough to get there, tho!
@Erica
Oooooo…videos. I’ve got to do some of that, too. BTW…congrats on all your success and making it happen. Obviously a twitter addiction would have totally gotten in the way of that kind of focus.
Good moves, Tara! Twitter, Gmail and everything is is the icing, not the cake. Focus on the cake. It’s good with or without the icing. And by the way, if you want to ice your cake efficiently, PeopleBrowsr is the way to go.
Tara,
You expressed something many of us struggle with daily and I appreciate knowing that you have made it through the early days with your new rules.
Good points and worth pondering. It may be time for me to set some new rules for myself.
Thank you (now I will Tweet this link for others to enjoy)
I agree and have been working towards the same.
The difficulty for me is that useful stuff is found through Twitter and interesting conversations are had. Because so many people have dropped blogging it can be difficult to find this info anywhere else.
Though the reality is do they really matter? Or does the time vs finding the *stuff* make up for it? At the moment, probably not.
I always feel proud of myself when I leave email and Twitter alone to focus on other stuff.
I guess blog post comments count as a distraction too?
Hey Tara–definitely see the same thing starting to happen to me, Twitter is turning from a tool that helps me do my job better (i.e. by making good connections, access to valuable info etc) into a big fat time-suck. I admire your courage to limit it–let me know how it goes! One day I hope to have your strength!
I think we’ve all had that kind of experience. A couple weeks ago, I put a pot of water to boil, and then tried to check something online. The internet wasn’t working, so I spent half an hour playing with cables and IP addresses. I finally got it to work, but then the fire alarm went off. The water had boiled out, and the bottom of the pot was glowing a brilliant orange.
Oops!
Hi Tara – just watched your slideshare on why social media won’t save you. – seriously impressed – Thank you – some real gems in there – see you on twitter
@satyacolombo
I can testify that in a five-minute walk and conversation in Ottawa on Wednesday morning, Tara didn’t check Tweetie on her phone even once!
In all seriousness, I’m also guilty of allowing my blogging output to dwindle because of time spent on Twitter. I find Twitter to be an incredible tool for building whuffie, but it can certainly become one big distraction.
I’m not quite ready to take the drastic steps that you have, Tara, but I do admire your new approach!
Will you update us all on your progress in a month?
Good luck Tara! I think most of us who’ve been heavy Twitter users since 2006-2007 are starting feeling it affect our ability to “be present” in our real lives. Glad you didn’t burn the house down.
I totally need to do this. I’ve been better about staying off Twitter when I’m not at a computer, but it’s like the evil chex mix that I can’t get enough of when I’m online. It honestly makes my head hurt.
Maybe the new job will keep me busy, though there is a piece of Social Media involved with work so not sure how that will balance out…
Somehow I stumbled upon this Twitter post today Tara.
First off CONGRATS to regaining control and not letting the addition get the best of you.
Personally I’ve stayed away from Twitter mainly because I still DON’T GET IT, (Twitter)!
Really.. I don’t care all that much what others are doing, thinking, and there’s little time in the day for me to do my task at hand and things I want and enjoy doing already. LOL
Blogging I fully understand because of content of what a person finds interesting. Also it seems easier to get to know someone and their beliefs from blogs as the post are longer, more engaging and though provoking.
I find the net is crazy with too much crap tends to lend itself and even cater to what seems to be more and more a narcissistic society.
My father who’s in his mid 60′s WASTE countless hours, days, and weeks of his life on some site called tagged trading, selling or whatever they do, pets!
There’s countless ways to waste precious time online, including of course Twitter, but hopefully we won’t become so isolated that we forget about and give up spending time with the people we love most in life.
Glad to know you’re back on track Tara.
Wishing both you and Ridley much sucess and happiness in your new home.