How Mark Zuckerberg stopped stealing my time
Surely, each of us has thought about procrastination. I’m not an exception and I asked myself, what steals so much of my time during the day. This idea came to me at the beginning of 2020 so I decided to install a browser extension called HabitLab.
After the first day, I was shocked about the amount of time I spent on Facebook and Instagram — the computer and phone time combined was one and a half-hour on Facebook and half an hour on Instagram. A total of two hours of my time. Quite an insane amount of time, but I’m sure it’s too little for some. Two hours a day for the whole month (let’s say 30 days), that’s 60 hours or two and a half days. I think these numbers are a bit bigger, but if you still don’t realize the amount of time this is in a year I’ll compute it for you. Two hours a day for 365 days is a total of 730 hours, which is 30 days and some hours. So being on social networks two hours a day lost me 1 whole month of a year. Unbelievable.
I realized this amount of time was too high right away and that this situation needs a solution. Even though I am a big fan of social networks, I prefer to meet my friends in person. The solution was very simple and straightforward: Deactivating my account on Facebook and Instagram. This was followed by deleting the app on my iPhone and I was “Zuckerberg free”. The first days were quite critical. I had the urge to open either Facebook or Instagram and see what’s going on in the world. After resisting the urge for one week, I didn’t even realize a need for opening Facebook or Instagram applications or pages during the next week. Personally, I was off social networks for a month and it never occurred to me that I was missing something.
You might not believe it, but after the first week I already realized that I have more time for any activity I desired. People often say they don’t have time to go to gym or go jogging. After deactivating the Facebook and Instagram accounts, I had time for anything. I used my new time for getting certificates from Amazon, Kubernetes, Microsoft Azure and I learned a lot of new things. I couldn’t find time for these things before, so by deleting my accounts on the platforms I stole my lost time back.
After a year without Facebook and Instagram, I signed up for these platforms again, and — I won’t lie — I didn’t like anything there anymore. These platforms are no longer interesting to me. As they say “every person gets what they are willing to work for”. The time I was robbed on Facebook and Instagram helped me to achieve my desired goals. I don’t think these platforms are interesting to me, and in the future, I wouldn’t rule out the complete cancellation of my accounts. If you realize that you are wasting your time on the same platforms as I was, you can achieve your desired goals or will have more time for any activity. If you decide to try disabling accounts on the same or even other platforms, I salute you with the words of Master Yoda “May the force be with you”. Take care.
