Facebook has for me, like many other people, it become a HUGE time drain. In thinking about having ‘just enough hours’  I’ve come to the obvious conclusion that I need to cut back on my time on ‘social media’. And FB is the biggest offender for me.

I have over 840 ‘friends’ (which I know is not a lot in comparison to a lot of people) on FB but probably only 75% of those are people I actually know. Many have a one or two degree of separation based on common friends or metalsmithing interests. Only a fraction of my FB friends are really people I communicate with.

In order to get a grip on my FB feed, I’ve taken the following steps:

UNFOLLOW:
I have begun to ‘unfollow’ people. This removes their posts from my ‘homepage’ or newsfeed.  This has reduced the amount of time it takes to go through new posts in my feed AND it allows items from people I have a genuine relationship with to be readily available.  Many other ‘friends’ who are a degree or two separated I still see in the groups we have in common.

NOTIFICATIONS:
I have turned off notifications in all but two groups. The groups that I want to keep a fairly close connection to I have favorited which moves them to the top left sidebar where I can see how many new posts there are and then click through.

UNFRIENDING:
This isn’t something I use often. I know it can be controversial, but I find it necessary at times in order to maintain my sanity! I have unfriended a few people whose posts bring too much negativity to my newsfeed. I saw a comment recently that it is ‘sad’ to see friends unfriending friends because of differences in belief.  I disagree. It’s not sad, It’s just a choice. This is MY life. It needs to work for me. I have people in my life that have different opinions and beliefs than I. I don’t live in a utopian bubble. I simply don’t have time for that on FB, it’s not how I choose to use FB.

FB can be a GREAT tool. IF we have clear expectations. Some people, like myself, use it for social outlet. Others use it for news and others for political discussion, etc.

I don’t judge other people for how they interact with FB – YOU need to decide what works for you. I’m ok with that.

There are other tools  that FB offers. Go to your home page and click the small down arrow in the upper right corner then use the ‘help’ link on the drop down. You can then search topics such as ‘organize’, ‘lists’, ‘manage’, etc.

We each have 24 hours in a day – it’s up to each of us individually to determine what our best use of that time is according to our responsibilities, goals, and dreams.

Do what works for you.