My sabbatical from social media (well, Twitter) has commenced but, as luck would have it, during my last few visits I actually found some interesting/useful information. The kind of thing I originally used the service for. This gave me pause for thought, but then I read an article on Nautil.us which made my mind up. That’s definitely it now. There is obviously a certain danger of confirmation bias here on my part given that I was thinking along these lines anyway, but quotes and links to studies showing that “repeated distractions lower people’s effective IQ by up to 10 points” makes it easy to cement my decision.

If/when I do return it’ll have to be in a much reduced capacity. Probably a ground zero approach on people I follow, better use of lists and more automation. Maybe I’ll do a blog post on how I set it up. I think Warren Ellis does something similar and is hugely productive, so that’s something to aim for perhaps.

It might be my imagination, but I already I think I’m seeing a benefit from simply having more time to do things. Those “few” minutes distractedly scrolling through a Twitter feed certainly do add up. I’m disabling as many notifications as I can get away with too. I must have been crazy to allow Apple News to send notifications to my phone screen (with accompanying buzz). Why should I allow a media company to interrupt whatever I’m doing, just so they can get some advertising revenue?