Well, we didn’t just give up Facebook.
For the past 30 days we haven’t used any social media(unless blog related,) or watched any videos. We haven’t spent time on mindless sites, or playing video games. We don’t know what the latest thing to go viral is, or the impending doom lurking around the corner. For the month of August, Page, myself, and a group of loyal challenge friends decided to free ourselves from the addiction of technology. Here’s what happened…
- With all the extra time on our hands, I migrated our blog from Blogger to WordPress. I wrote more and also came up with a somewhat strategic plan for this blog’s future.
- I started selling cookies, I mean why not? Note: It’s really easy to start a business. The sooner you start the sooner you find out if it’s a good idea or not. Fail fast people.
- I wasn’t more productive. At least not as productive as I thought I would be. Why? Well, we don’t need social media to be distracted or procrastinate. A couple of challenge friends mentioned that while their social media use went down their online shopping went up!
- We went to bed earlier. At the end of the day we are beat. Without the option to watch a movie we opted to just get more sleep.
- We were more present. We didn’t have our faces in our phones while we were hanging out. We enjoyed not feeling the need to check our phones while we were with people.
- I’m sure I missed things that happened but, I have no idea what they were. We don’t feel like we missed much of anything, we relied on other people to fill us in with the latest news. And furthermore, it’s okay to find out something happened a month later.
- I spent less time judging others. You know conversations that start like, “hey, did you see what so and so said?”
- We got used to it, I almost forgot we were doing the challenge. I sort of moved on with my life and left the mindless time sucks behind.
- During the first week. I found that I would type “facebook” on my computer or phone. The fact that is was so habitual creeped me out. At that point, I decided I would not be making Facebook a regular part of my day or spend any significant amount of time on it after the challenge.
- We listened to some podcasts and TED talks when we were bored. I noticed I had to actually use my brain to listen instead of turning my mind off like I do when I watch a movie.
This was a great challenge, one worthy of repeating. If you didn’t join us, try it out on your own sometime. Starting September 1st we are doing a vegan challenge. We would love for you to give a plant based diet a try. Whether it’s just Meatless Monday or, deciding to give up all animal products with us!
Things to think about:
- Producing more than you consume.
- How much time do you spend scrolling on the interwebs?
- Watching us crash and burn during our 30 day vegan challenge. 😉
- Saying you’re going to exercise is easier than actually exercising.