The New Discipline

So, a little over a week ago I decided to stop checking on Twitter for a week. My trigger was the realization I was getting increasingly grumpy as I interacted with folks on there (a warning sign for all manner of things). It proved surprisingly difficult — at least checking in on my @mentions every few minutes had gotten pretty ingrained into my daily routine, despite largely segregating my twitter use onto my iPad. So I deleted the app, adding in enough of a nuisance factor for checking that I could stop myself once I got past the first few seconds of purely habit-driven instinct.

Now that I’ve done it, it’s proven pretty nice. The week has given me perspective on something I’ve always known about myself: that despite spending so much time online, I’m actually poorly suited for it in particular ways, especially when those ways involve frequent-update inputs. The effect is akin to the presence of white noise that you can’t quite manage to filter out. Eventually the tenseness that brings on builds up, and it starts purging in the form of certain grumpy behaviors (see: warning signs, above). I’ve managed to substitute an increase in my use of Google Reader to feed my brain’s desire for some kind of regular input outside of email, but thankfully, that’s the sort of thing that has a much less constantly-pokin’-atcha vibe.

This also ties in to something Paul Tevis talked about recently, about the myth of human multitasking (it doesn’t actually work), and what benefits can come from giving it up. I’m not quite there yet, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be, but sharply cutting down on my twitter use has been a help already, there. I’m more on top of my queue than I have been in some time (though I was doing a pretty decent job at staying on top of the priority items in it before).

The downside, of course, is the loss of community outreach, and that’s something I haven’t quite solved. I think I will keep using Twitter in the long haul, but probably under specific constraints: like, only checking in once a week, focusing on @mentions so I can respond to those, and using it as a “side-effect” announcer for things like blog posts and links of interest. While this is not ideal in some ways — I won’t feel quite so current in keeping up with what other folks are up to — I think it’ll be healthier for me, mentally and organizationally, so it’s time to take the experiment out of the “just this week” short-term and into something a bit longer-term and more deliberate. With luck it may afford me opportunities to blog a little more, too, though I’m not yet to a point where I feel like I need to make that a regular thing.

What this means for you is that if you need my attention, the “old” ways are going to be best: comment on the blog, or email me. I live out of my inbox (all hail Active Inbox), so the stuff that pushes into my emailspace is going to be the most successful. While I will be looking in on things in other ways (see: checking in once a week, above), unless something’s explicitly addressed to me, I probably won’t see it. And that’s a good thing. A calmer thing. And hopefully, still, a social thing.