I’ve noticed in the past (and rewriting this post as a reminder) that if I want to create more I need to swap my Twitter habit with a creation one. I’m finding that in downtime that I’m scrolling my feeds in Twitter or Reddit instead of doing something to benefit my mental health like playing my guitar or jotting down my thoughts here or hey even going out for a walk.

I’m going to be taking a break from Twitter especially over the next month to see if I improve my mood and frequency of output I’m happy with.

Join in with me and see what happens to your creative projects you’ve been looking to spend more time on.

I’ve fallen into a bit of a trap after a great month stat wise in January to now seeing a 60% drop in traffic since and feeling down about my creative endeavours. But weirdly swapping to Tweetbot and not seeing engagement has actually helped me realise the blog is about getting stuff out of my head and sharing my thoughts. It’s not a money maker (costs me to run it) and after several failed attempts at Patreon I realise my content isn’t worth paying for but I still ploughed on - I needed an outlet to talk about passions I can’t do in my day to day.

This’ll continue whilst I have the energy to put it out there.

Being consistent is something I’ve always struggled with, I have flourishes of being really good and moments of being terrible. I’m not just talking about writing on my blog but in general. I’ll have a good spell with my mood and have a positive effect on the world around me then I’ll have a big dip and seem to make everything worse.

I don’t check stats too much but look at this massive dip in traffic over the last couple of weeks. I’ve not been consistent again, when I start to write again the traffic picks up.

I guess I’m rambling with this post but I what I’m trying to say, especially if you’re doing something creative is to try to be as consistent as possible.

Since restoring my iPhone a few weeks ago I’ve fallen back into the trap of the modern smartphone. What I mean by this is having all of the apps I can available to me to use and getting caught up in these Infinity wells, such as YouTube and Social networking. Neither of which are particularly great for my wellbeing these days.

It hit me this morning whilst browsing Reddit, why am I mindlessly doing this?.

I want to be more intentional with how I’m using my technology and allow myself to be bored. Enjoy a walk without a podcast in my ears sometimes or just enjoy the warm sunshine on my face in the garden with no desire to see what’s happening on Twitter.

It also hit me that I’ve written about this before on the blog, many times actually. I’ve written about helping to reduce the time you spend on your phone and also steps I’ve made, such as only checking Twitter once a week but I’ve forgotten to listen to former me!

This post is a reminder that when I fall into bad habits to step back and think about how I want to use my technology and interact with the world around me.

So this week I’ll be back to

• Removing all social networking apps from my iphone
• Checking Twitter weekly for notifications
• Sharing smaller posts more, I've noticed good feedback from readers of my stuff lately. This in part because my default is to share here rather than on social media
• Reducing my podcast consumption (I'm listening to over 20 shows a week!)
• Leaving YouTube (again)
• Deleting Reddit apps (again)
• Doing my best to stick with one to do app and keeping it simple

And remembering to read some of my earlier stuff

• Scheduling Twitter
• Deleting YouTube
• Doing social on your blog

I’ve made a slight tweak to my morning routine that seems to be having an overall positive effect on my day. I’ve been journaling for a while but only in the evening. After listening to an episode of The Automators on the subject I added a new Reminder that simply asks me to write down something I’m grateful for each morning at 7:30am.

Instead of picking up my iPhone and digesting news of social media I think of something that I’m happy about of grateful for in my life. I get on with day afterwards but starting off with something positive is a nice way to kick things off.

You’ve maybe noticed I’ve been quiet on Twitter for a few days, well I’ve not engaged with it for almost a week now and I have to say that I’m feeling better for it. I feel like my mind is less busy with racing thoughts and I’m allowing myself to be bored instead of picking up my phone and checking my feed.

This might continue for a while. I’m unsure whether I’ll actually come back at this point.

I’m still posting to my blog, something I won’t be dropping anytime soon.

I’ve dropped the podcast for now, I’m sorry but I’m just not into sharing what I’m doing on iOS right now, I guess I’m becoming less enthusiastic about technology right now and seeing it more of a tool to get through my day rather than something I want to actively promote. Being honest here I also don’t have the time. I found myself in moments of free time engaging in other activities and the podcast was last on the list. I don’t see the point in doing it if my creativity isn’t there for it.

I’m in a couple of slack rooms, which has mostly replaced the need for Twitter. I’ve also got a slack room myself, I’ll share details on this if anyone wants to join in maybe.

I’ve also become less and less interested in YouTube and deleted the apps from my iOS devices. At this point I only watch my subscriptions on the TV.

Reddit has also gone from my iOS devices. It’s become a major time suck for me.

I’d recommend everyone take a break from at least your social media for a week, like me it might give you some interesting insights.

You might have seen my tweet, it was the last one I did yesterday. I’ve decided to take a proper break from social media. I use Twitter, Instagram and Slack. I stopped using Facebook in Jan 2018. In a bid to get some more quality time back in my life it’s a decision that was actually quite easy with how toxic most of them are. I do get a lot of value from interacting with others but the negatives of both ‘the feed’ and companies attitudes towards its users has finally become too much for me.

I have a blog I want to put effort into, a podcast to plan and music to record. Spending too much time lost on Social isn’t helping me succeed in any of this.

What I’ve noticed

• I'm picking up my phone less
• I'm less distracted thinking about the news or thinking about purchases
• I'm spending more time in apps that give me some value, such as sketching out ideas in Notes for example

Yesterday happened to be the day when another iOS beta dropped but I stayed strong and didn’t install any social apps to catch up on what happened. Not sure how long I’ll last but I’m going to give it a good go.

Inspired by the Center for Humane Technology I've decided to take some control back and adopt some of their suggestions for using my iPhone less. The first stage to this was to implement the greyscale filter, not only does it give you more battery life but makes your iPhone screen seem less playful and in turn less likely to play around with too much.

Here's how to enable this

• Tap Settings
• Tap General
• Tap Accessibility
• Tap Display Accommodations
• Tap Colour Filters
• Tap the toggle and make sure Greyscale is selected

You can easily disable when you want to take a photo or view images by adding a shortcut in control centre like this

• Tap Settings
• Tap Control Centre
• Tap Customise Controls
• Tap the + next to Accessibility Shortcuts

Now when you want to get some colour back simply swipe down from the top and tap on the Accessibility Shortcut button.

After watching a few videos and a recent BBC documentary on smartphone addiction, especially social media I’ve decided to make some changes. This may or may not last but I want to give it a go. I don’t spend a lot of time of Instagram, haven’t used Facebook since January 2018 but still use Twitter and YouTube heavily. I find that as soon as I unlock my iPhone I’m instinctively reaching for the app icons of these two apps. The BBC documentary really highlighted for me the mind games employed by social media app makers and the lack of respect that they have for their user base. There is good and bad to everything but in recent times social media has been awash with the bad. Thankfully I don’t see a lot of it targeted at me but when I have it’s unsettling and reminds me to take a step back. Certain fandoms are toxic right now and changing your mind on a device or subject also gets you some flak. Having an opinion is important but I’ve decided not to air it all in public on social media so much. I’ll still be sharing my thoughts on my passions here on my blog but I may be quieter on Twitter for a while. I also have a few new passion projects I want to get into and limiting my time on social media will give me some time back. Wish me luck and I hope a few of you will join along and take a step back for a minute.