5 Things I Learned in 30 Days Without Facebook (part 1)

1 through 5
(In no particular order)

1) Facebook sets people up to annoy each other just as much as it helps people celebrate one another. Well, what more can I say about that. You know it's true.

It really is a tension. We all want to celebrate the lives of each other. Who doesn't? That's what makes facebook cool. But in celebrating I think we become all too familiar with one another. And you know how the saying goes, "familiarity breeds contempt."

2) Thinking to yourself is healthy. Throwing your thoughts out for the world to see is almost too easy. I found that there were many times in my hibernation where I found myself saying, "there's a post!" only to have to put it aside. When I put that thought/post aside I found myself actually thinking about what I thought I wanted to say. After a few moments the "feeling to post" passed and I was glad it did...Why did I need you to validate that little thought of mine? I didn't. Neither do you.

What we need is the discipline to actually do great things with important thoughts! Imagine what would happen if you could actually put your clever idea to work?

3) Facebook and Doritos should be consumed and shared in moderation. I love Doritos. I can eat and eat Doritos. A full bag can become an empty bag quickly. I think Doritos melt my brains ability to think about what I am doing. Facebook can do the same. Before you know it, you are on facebook all the time. You're waiting to see if you have any red in your notifications. It's an addictive cycle. Like Doritos, you're hooked...no turning back.

Let me say that healthy relationships should be encouraged and facebook can nourish some relationships. Notice that I italicized healthy in the last sentence. But not all facebook relationships are healthy for your soul or good for your heart. So, like Doritos, facebook as a relationship tool and some facebook relationships are best in moderation.

4) We all want to be heard, but there are not enough listeners. One of the primary reasons facebook is so addictive is that we believe people are actually listening to us. Our spouse may not listen, our boss may not listen, our kids may not listen, our parents may not listen, but SOMEONE on facebook will listen. And you never know who will listen. It may be your friend from the third grade or a person you copied notes from in college. It really could be anyone, but for that moment, you know you were heard.

I'm convinced the world has lost the fine art of listening. We don't pause to think. People rally behind convenience and short-term success when the right answer and long-lasting success is right in front of their nose if only they would pause and listen. Millions of marriages, jobs, and relationships would be saved if we lived in a world where people listened. On facebook someone will listen, the only challenge is just because someone is listening, it doesn't mean the right people are listening. This is especially true if you want to bring about change with someone who is not listening to you when you are face to face.

5) Taking a break from Facebook doesn't break you socially! If you naturally love people, leaving the facebook world does not disconnect you from important relationships. You may engage with some of your relationships differently, but those relationships do not go away - nor do they die!

Facebook tends to play out more like summer camp than real life.  What I mean is that relationships on facebook are fairly static. You can leave and come back and pick up right where you left off. Just like friends at summer camp. I see you. You see me. We hang out. We don't see each other for 6 months and it's like no time has passed at all!

On this topic, like I've said in other posts, without facebook some relationships get stronger. I found that my face to face relationships became more rich and dynamic.
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I'm still processing many thoughts and will post more things I learned if/when they come to me. No doubt, if you take a break from facebook, you'll have some different experiences than me, but one thing I can guarantee is that for every day you are off of facebook, you'll begin to learn more about you.

30 Days Without Facebook Q&A

Wow! 30 days without facebook. And they said it couldn't be done...

After years of being on facebook, I took a social risk and exited the facebook scene for 30 days. 30 days is a long time in todays modern world.

Here are the most common questions I received during this journey.

Why did I do it? 
Looking back at my experience it's hard to remember all the details why, but I'll try. It's complex and honestly, I don't fully understand it, but I felt this tug in my heart telling me that it was time and overdue.

I think part of it was that I don't like being addicted to anything man-made or manufactured. Actually, I'm not a fan of any kind of addiction. Honestly though, I never thought of FB as an addiction. It's always been a simple something that just existed. But, for something that just existed, I looked at it nearly everyday. It was favorited on all my browsers. I looked at work, home, and on my phone. I liked seeing a red box on my facebook. I liked thumbs ups and comments. I liked to give thumbs ups and comments. But somehow it didn't feel right. I wanted to see why.

Another part was that I found that there are some awesome people who bug the smack out of me on facebook - (how's that for honesty). I can't explain this. Maybe it's that some people present themselves better in real life than in text format. I really don't know, but I do know that I like most people better in real life than when they try to express their life through a text or 140 characters. This is not so much about anyone else as it is about me. I didn't like the way I felt inside after reading some people's posts. No offense to anyone, but sometimes I would read posts and be in a bad mood afterward. I didn't like that.

Besides being annoyed by others, I was also at times annoyed with myself. I thought, "If I think some people are annoying on facebook, then I am probably just as annoying to someone else." Who wants to be that? Nobody does. I actually want to be a guy that people enjoy and don't want to tarnish that on facebook.

There was also a piece of me that wanted to engage in face to face relationships in a more intentional way. For me facebook could easily supplement my desire to be intentional with the relationships closest to me.

I also wanted to learn how to listen again. Because facebook is always happening it, for me, it became distracting. My wife would want to talk and so she'd start talking. About 3 minutes into pouring her heart out, I'd look up from the computer and go, "what was that honey?" Let's just say that never goes over well! Life is full of distractions and facebook (along with other things) add to the distractions of being able to be fully present where you are and who you are with.

What was the point where I didn't miss facebook?
After 10 days in, it became very easy to live a life free of distraction and newsfeeds. I have to admit that I liked the freedom. I liked reminding myself that life is about choices. And that everyday is a choice to live in a way that is either more abundant than the last or less abundant than the last. Being without facebook felt healthy. It was like a breath of fresh air or hanging upside down just to see the world from a different angle. It was good!

30 days flew by in a heartbeat.

What was the hardest part about being away from facebook?
My cousin had a son and I wanted to comment on his page and my wife and I celebrated our five year anniversary and I wanted to shout that milestone from the rooftops!

I also missed feedback. I missed opinions on decisions I was making. I had to rely on "reviews" from amazon, google, yelp, etc...


What was the best part about not being on facebook?
I became more aware of the people that are around me. I did listen more. I did big things that actually matter - like learn how to fix my car myself. I read 5 books. I wrote blog posts for other people's blogs. I emceed more events. I simply did things. Things I like to do. It was cool.

What would I have done differently?
I would have made my break a full on computer break. No computers of any kind for 30 days..It's not practical, I know, but wouldn't it be cool to see what the world would look like without a computer in your hand or in front of your face at nearly all moments of the day?

A buddy of mine, who works for a cell phone company, actually decided to get rid of his smartphone for a year. He's using a plain-jane cell phone. Now that's kind of cool.

Why am I back on Facebook?
Great question. I found many more benefits being off facebook than I found negatives/drawbacks during my journey. But, like most tools, I try not to blame them as much as I do the person using it. In this case it is me. After breaking the cycle, my hope is to not be on facebook much - maybe 3 times a week.

My next post will be 10 things I learned by taking a facebook hibernation....

Removing the facebook flinch

Becoming automated in our thinking is typically not a good thing. Life is dynamic and so should our thought life be.

Facebook requires some thought, but it also has created in me what I call the facebook flinch. It's that uncontrollable desire to check facebook. You hit buttons without even knowing you hit facebook. It's like a little addiction.

Facebook knows this. Now that I've been off facebook, the social media site wants me back. I just received an email from facebook trying to tell me what I am missing. It felt (because of this journey) like they were an after school special drug dealer saying, "Hey kid, you want to get high...all your friends are doing it...come on kid, just one hit!"

I had to resist the urge to hit their link so I could see what I am missing.

So, removing the facebook flinch is difficult, but it can be done. Try it today!

Of Dodgeball and Spilling the Milk

Within the middle of a facebook hibernation, I've become painfully aware of a fear all children share: Not being picked for kickball!

Being off facebook kind of recreates those feelings of inadequacy. Now, I was never the last kid picked,  no matter where you were in the picking order, you can always imagine. Picking teams is always telling and it was always scary.

In many ways I feel that by being off of facebook, I am being picked last. I get no little thumbs ups. I get no clever comments. I barely get personal emails anymore, so what do I have!?! I have texts.

I have never been a text message connoisseur, but now I love texts. They are like gold little nuggets on my phone. What's cool about this is that texts are from people who usually really know you. It's rare that I get random texts from people I barely talk to. Texts are from the peeps who you know deeper...so for me, that's cool.

But being without facebook also kind of makes you feel like you just spilled milk on your crouch at the cafeteria. You don't know what to do. Do you move? Do you stay? How do you survive your life when everyone is talking about you...or in this case, not talking about you or to you?

It's lonesome at times, but it is also healthy. It is healthy to leave the superficialness of dodgeball and spilled milk. It's healthy to see that you have worth way beyond an electronic thumbs up. It's healthy to lose yourself in worthwhile endeavors and not wonder what you are missing every second of the day.

7 days of utopia?

It's been seven days since starting my 30 day facebook hibernation. Am I still alive? Yes!

So, what has it been like? It's been fantastically awesome most of the time, but I have bumped into many challenges. I'll start by sharing some challenges in this post and save the positives for another post.

The hardest part of not being on facebook is that I don't have access to 1000 opinions when I want opinions.  It may sound silly, but I've come to rely on listening to facebook friends on a myriad of topics. For example, I've been exploring grad school. I know people would have an opinion on that topic. I have some questions and would like a myriad of perspectives. On facebook I'd simply throw a question out there and then capture a ton of opinions and do my best to make a wise decision. With facebook that's easy. Without it...well, it's harder.

I've come to rely on mining for balance through the sometime extreme views of my friends on facebook.
What I've found is that if you have enough people weigh in on something, somewhere in the middle of the thought train a nugget of truth emerges.  I'm not trying to say that everyone's extreme on facebook, but facebook lends itself to people being showing off their extreme side. Let's be honest, very few people are on facebook to be subtle.

My next challenge comes in that I have no idea what people are doing. This is a blessing in some ways, but I have felt a little bummed when someone says, "Oh, that's right...you didn't know...I posted that I inherited the lottery and gave $1000 to the first 100 people to give me a thumbs up...sorry you missed it man."

I've also learned that my brain is programed to click on the blue and white facebook app box on my phone and my facebook link in my browser.  Boredom is my trigger , to click and check. This is a hard habit to break and to be honest, I have clicked by accident.  In my near automatic state I've even seen the little red bubbles telling me that someone mentioned my name or wrote something to me...I can do nothing and I will do nothing. I stay legit and close the app or the page quickly and move on. In fact, I have not read a status update at all. Each day I am getting stronger at not having a blue button accident.

Ok, that's enough for today...7 days....

P.S.

Facebook Hibernation

Today is day one of my hibernation from facebook. It's been long overdue.

You see, I started facebook in 2007 and in many ways haven't looked back. Sure, I was skeptical at first. I was even a mocker of the concept.  In fact, I saw the early adopters of facebook like those obsessed people who play wizardy role playing games online. You know the type. They spend nearly 6 months out of a full calendar year earning points so they can have a bigger sword to slay the ogre-dwarf. They have a community, oops, a guild, that they chat with on their fancy headphones deep into the early a.m. hours. You see, I saw facebook like that. It wasn't what everybody was doing. It was what sensitive people who needed validation were doing. But I was wrong!

In the blink of an eye, I turned around and soon facebook was the tickle-me-elmo of the internet world. Everyone had to have a facebook account. People were abandoning myspace by the droves. In fact, if you even had a myspace account people thought you were either A) out of it, or B) kind of creepy.

I never wanted to be labeled as either of those things, so I jumped off of myspace and explored the world of facebook.

I can't remember for sure, but I believe my first post was something sarcastic like, "I'm important. You should know what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, and what I'm doing it for at all times." I thought my comment was kind of funny, but in a matter of seconds, I realized that what I said basically slammed everyone's posts! Nobody thought it was funny. I was making light of what other people had created as their whole world. This was their life. Facebook was their community. People actually cared what other people were doing at all times. In what felt like an instant, I could tell my comment made me a loser in the facebook world!

I had to change my tone fast! I started to be more serious with facebook. I started to post what I was doing...and what I wasn't doing. People seemed to care. I liked that people cared (still do). I would check my facebook like my 5 email accounts (we all have at least 5 don't we?). I would look once a day. This worked for my 150 friends. It was enough. But soon, I began adding more friends. Each day was like a class reunion. Nay, it was like a school reunion. Nay, it was like a life reunion. I was looking at people that I hadn't seen in years. And they were looking at me. They could see whatever I posted and I could see what they posted. It was like a glorious stream of randomness that in some strange way made sense...kind of. I at least tried to make it make sense because to everyone else it seemed to make perfect sense.

In 2009, my facebook world changed again. I got an iphone. Now facebook was in the palm of my hands all the time. It was so much easier than being at a computer. Now I could check facebook all the time! Yes! It was just what I always needed. Let's face it. Many apps on the iphone get boring (I-AM-T-Pain excluded), but facebook never gets old. Every day there's a fresh slice of randomness from people all over the place who I call my facebook friends (my guild).

So, all the above to simply say that here I am today, 4 years later, taking my first 30 day hibernation from facebook. Why do I call it a hibernation? Because it's not permanent. It's for a season.

Eventually, I'll wake up from my slumber from social media, but for now I want to be lost in a world where I am not looking at my phone 35 times a day. I want to focus on something without feeling I'm missing something.  I want to see how I would invest the time I am given each day without the allure of facebook. I want to wake up and not feel like I need to see what everybody else did with their evening. I want to focus on stillness. I want to focus on simplicity. I want to write something substantial. Mostly, I want to cleanse the mind and see the world from another angle. It's funny, but by going facebookless, I feel like I am heading into the antique roadshow. It's as if I'm going to a place of old-timey, Norman-Rockwellesque, mystique. Who knows what I'll find? I have no clue. But I feel like it will be well worth the journey. Almost like finding that little old lamp that has been sitting in grandmas attic that someone was going to throw away only to find out that its worth $10,000 dollars.

I'll post on this blog as I go along. I will not post this blog on facebook as it defeats the purpose of hibernation. I will write my thoughts on a world without facebook, what's good about facebook, what's not-so-good for me about facebook, and probably process things without really knowing what I'm trying to process. I am not trying to say that facebook is not a worthwhile endeavor and I am not critiquing folks who are on facebook 24/7. This is for me. Maybe you think a facebook hibernation is crazy - that's ok! Maybe you think it's what you need to experience too - that's ok! If it is the latter, join me. I'd love to hear how you come out on the other side of your hibernation.

With that, here I go -  facebook-less for 30 days!