Like most people who work in software, I spend a lot of time browsing social networks - particularly Facebook. It’s a massive distraction, kills my production and, for the most part, a waste of time. Last year I organised an intervention; I tried restricting my Facebook use in an effort to wean myself off it. I was able to discipline myself from using Facebook during the month of that experiment but a couple of weeks later I found that I’d easily slipped back into my old habits of checking it regularly.
About a month ago, I decided to take a more subtle, Kaizen approach to decreasing my Facebook use.
Kaizen is a philosophy of solving problems, achieving goals and improving performance by making small, incremental, and very easy steps in the direction of your goal. Kaizen works so well because, rather than being an idealistic principle, Kaizen is pragmatic and based on the science of how our brains work.
The premise is simple: our brains are wired to reject big changes, at least for the most part. We prefer habit and routine. Any dramatic changes to what we’re used to are perceived as a threat and we resist them. Kaizen encourages us to make changes that are so small, and so easy that they bypass our brain’s built-in fear response. These small changes eventually become new, beneficial habits that take us a step closer to our goal.
Applying Kaizen to my Facebook use, I asked myself the simple question: What’s the smallest change I could make to prevent Facebook from distracting me so much? The first thing I thought of was to stop my phone from chiming when I received a new notification on Facebook. I changed my notification settings and was already a little less distracted, as I’d have to actively check my phone for notifications, rather than allow it to tell me when I should check it.
Over the course of the next few days, I’d ask myself the same question, and was surprised at how many small steps I was able to come up with.
- Turn off mobile notifications completely
- Turn off email notifications completely (I’d actually done this a while back but it definitely belongs in this list)
- Turn off Facebook chat
- Hide the sidebar
- Turn off notifications from just one of the Facebook group’s I’m part of (repeat as and when you’re ready)
- Turn off all notifications from Apps and Games in Facebook
- Ask friends to text or email instead of sending messages in Facebook
- Stop receiveing News Feed updates from the connections whom I don’t need to keep up with
- Like fewer posts
- Comment on fewer posts
- Stop checking Facebook on my phone while I’m walking
- Think twice before I post. “Will this post still be as interesting or amusing tomorrow?”
The result of taking each of these small steps is that the number of notifications I receive daily has dropped from 20 or 30 to 3 or 4. And, more importantly, I decide when I check them - not Facebook. More surprising though, was the shift in mindset I experienced when I set myself the challenge. Thinking of ways to prevent Facebook from bidding for my attention became a game. It was actually rewarding to cut back on my usage, rather than difficult, which I found when I tried to go cold turkey in my previous attempt.
I continue to use Facebook less and less, using it now only as a useful way to contact friends who are further away, or to share links I find interesting with my friends and followers.