A day in the life of an evolved Social Media consumer

It is Monday morning. The alarm on your smart phone rings. You reach out and switch it off.

You don’t check your messages or headlines, while still half asleep.

You do your morning routines.

You take out your laptop from the Almirah. Saturday night, you had put it away. You had also turned the data off on your phone - so you could still get calls, but nothing more.

Six days a week you are connected. You spent Sunday with a few friends, doing only analog things. You cook, do hobbies together, go out for a drive or a trek. It is your digital detox.

A decent breakfast later, you are at work by 9:00 AM. No Monday morning blues.

For the next 2 hours, you have a single task. What you do now is the core of your job.

It helped that you did not have to first sit and figure out what you would do. You had already planned it on Friday evening, before leaving from work.

Maybe you write. Maybe you review. All that matters is that you do it without interruption, without multi-tasking. 

At 11:00 AM you sit back and admire how much you have accomplished in just this much time.

Co-workers know you are very reachable after 11:00. Before 11:00, if there is an emergency, they can always walk up to you.

You turn on the data. Surprise surprise! You are not literally flooded with email and messages.

Why? You have consciously unsubscribed so many things. An aggressive set of filters - that you actively manage - keeps away everything but the essential email. No social media notifications reach you.

An hour of catching up with email and messages and you are mostly done. For now. Optional - You turn on an internet blocker so that there will be no temptations till 5:00 PM.

You get on with the rest of your day. Meetings. Workflow. Reaching out. You do what you need to do.

You strive to do only one thing at a time and a Pomodoro timer helps you do that.

You have a decent note taking system in place. Previous related content is easy to dig out and most things are a mere search away. Every week you spend an hour ensuring your systems continue to be razor sharp.

In additional to boosting personal effectiveness - this saves you from impulsively going to the net to search for things - and kickoff a whole downward surfing spiral.

At 5, you sit back and smile to yourself. It is time to let social media into your life but not by raising flood gates.

Before you start, you quickly remind yourself what you want to accomplish today with social media.

Last week, you were doing concept research and you want to reach out to experts. This week you are validating a hypothesis, so it is potential customers. Next summer, you might be looking for a job. All are valid reasons.

You search for connections and reach out to them, with a connection request. You have a pre-crafted self introduction that boosts your credibility and gets you the accepts.

It is now time to surf your feed. You get yourself a fresh cup of coffee and settle down. 

You read and respond. Chances of junk posts are low. Every week, you diligently curate your ‘follow list’, unfollowing people, as your interests change. Nothing personal there.

You have made a simple rule for yourself. You will make at least 5 meaningful comments on the posts you see in the next 45 minutes.

Some days, you continue for longer but your feed is never in the driving seat. You are!

You head home and settle down for some Netflix after dinner. Yes, you do not watch TV and eat at the same time. Neither do you watch TV in the bedroom, where you actually sleep.

One last thing - you are a bit of a stickler for going to the bed, the same time every night.

Friday’s - of course - are an exception!