My digital sabbatical experience

The idea of social media sabbatical seemed great to me for a number of reasons. First of all, I’d always wanted to test my willpower to see how long am I going to last without social networking. Also, I was curious whether I would actually get my things done, or I’d just find some other destruction so I could continue procrastinating.

However, it also seemed challenging thing to try, mostly because social networking is such a huge thing in today’s society. When I was about to start my social media sabbatical I was a little worried and I couldn’t figure out why. Now it seems to me that the main reason was that Facebook and other social networks give an individual the feeling of engagement. You get to watch what happens in lives of people you know, it’s extremely addictive. Once you’re not on the social networking tool you feel like you’re missing out.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t completely step out of social networking even for a day. The day I started the digital sabbatical I didn’t do my social networking “routine”. Usually it includes checking my Facebook, e-mail and Instagram. Skipping those procedures wasn’t a big deal to me, mainly because I checked it the evening before. Unluckily, later that day my classmate messaged me some details about the test we are to have next week. I decided it’s important enough to make an exception for and checked my messages. After doing that I felt guilty because my social media sabbatical ended up so fast.

Nevertheless it was done, and I thought maybe I should continue the sabbatical and at least don’t go through my Facebook newsfeed. This basically has become my rule, I allowed myself to check important messages but I couldn’t use social networking in any other way. I knew I was supposed to step away from the Internet completely, but I couldn’t sacrifice my grades or job for that. Therefore I chose to continue this kind of a “light version” of digital sabbatical for the rest of the 48 hours. Another thing I couldn’t ignore were Facebook messages from my parents. Facebook is the only way my family can reach me, since they live in Russia, so I had to respond to them. I found it pointless to tell them about the social media sabbatical because they would be too worried to lose a contact with me.

In my opinion the whole situation here is a certain proof of how much we depend on social media. It’s not only something we use to entertain ourselves, it’s a necessity. Not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, I can confidently say I’m not able to fully run my daily activities without using it. 

Anyways, as I was continuing sabbatical, I clearly noticed I have way more spare time than I had thought. For example, I used to check social media tools on the bus from work. Since I wasn’t allowed to, I finally started reading a book I downloaded months ago! It felt really strange when I realized how often I postpone small things like that just to check the social media. This part of my observation proves what was said in “A Magical Block of Time: Lessons Learned from my Digital Sabbatical” by Tammy Strobel about how we constantly distract ourselves from what’s actually important for us. The worst part is that we don’t even notice that!

Another thing I agree with that refers to in “A Magical Block of Time: Lessons Learned from my Digital Sabbatical” by Tammy Strobel is her statement about practicing mindfulness on the Internet. I used to get distracted on the Internet really easy, especially using social network tools. Usually “I’ll just check my Facebook messages” turned into an hour and a half of browsing through the stuff my friends posted recently. From now on I’m trying to stay focused on whatever task I’m doing. I also started avoiding all the negative content as it ruins my optimistic mind set.    

In conclusion, the social media sabbatical is definitely worth trying. It helped me to improve my time management skills by simply reducing the time spent on the social networks. It also gave me an opportunity to see how easy it is to complete things you want to do when you’re not being constantly distracted by social networking. I will certainly keep managing my social networking habits so I could have more spare time for my hobbies and studies.