Internet Diet: Recap & Thoughts
Pull the plug, lady!
I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to hear the results of the internet diet & my thoughts on it after finishing! I ended up just doing one hour a day; thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes at night. I was originally going to do two hours a day, but figured I might as well do as little as possible. Without further ado…
The good:
- Once I had a time limit established, it was really, really easy to stay under that time and still get done everything I needed done. A large part of this might be due to my personal situation (I know a lot of other people get more email/comments and are subscribed to more blogs than I am), but with 30 minutes I managed to check my email, check job listings, read comments/delete spam, read a blog entry or three, and even tweet a couple of times.
- I found it a lot easier to stick to my morning routine of doing yoga before anything else. I’m not sure why, maybe because I knew I’d be closing the laptop after 30 minutes, and then I’d end up doing the yoga anyways.
- I generally found myself less stressed out throughout the week.
- Lots more time for reading.
- And for some reason, I slept much better than usual!
The bad:
There wasn’t any bad, actually! Except coming back to a large backlog of blog posts in my Google Reader. And missing my Twitter buddies.
Thoughts & reactions:
I think the weirdest thing for me was realizing how not-bad it is to only check email twice a day. I had this vision of my email inbox overflowing, with me frantically trying to keep up, and in reality? Not so much. I don’t know if it’s because checking your email every ten minutes gives the illusion of receiving many more messages than there actually are, or what, but there you have it.
The main thing I decided is that I need to cut down my intake of internet-based media, pure and simple. I’ve already cleaned up my reader by some 30%, and I’m unsubscribing from email lists left and right. I think a large part of the reason I’ve been feeling very stale and in somewhat of a rut lately is that most of the things I read or look at are internet based – this isn’t bad in and of itself, but for my brain to have a large reservoir of inspiration to draw from, more variety is needed.
The problem is, as I noted last time, the totally frickin’ addictive nature of the internet. My eventual goal is to try and get everything internet related that needs done in two or three days a week. All the internet-based writing, blog maintenance, email reading/replying, that good stuff. The rest of the time, I’ll be keeping it down to two hours a day. And I’m going to keep only checking my email 2-3 times a day, as well as stay off the computer for an hour or two before bed since it seems to have made me sleep so much better.
Oh, and as far as the direction of the site? I decided I’d just write what I wanted to, and make up new categories all willy-nilly as needed. Which means there is a strong possibility of non-fashion/style related posts in the future, just a heads up!
I think a lot of our generations anxiousness and lack of focus can be attributed to the internet. There’s always an update, an email, a tweet or blog post to read that it gets overwhelming. Brava chica for taking the e-reigns and not letting the net control you! I’m on an e-sabbatical of sorts as well!
I think this is something I should try and do.
2 hours might be too little, seeing as this is my job, but I really need to cut down on things like checking my email during the evenings.
Well done!
.-= Retro Chick´s last blog ..Hidden Gems – STUFF in Croydon =-.
okay, i am so excited to do this ‘diet’ too. I was thinking about the difference between having a day off at home vs. vacation away and two big difference are internet and tv, so applying less and internet and tv should make me feel more of that stress free vacationy feeling.
i love that you slept better and read more. i was just talking about how much i love books, yet i only seem to read them on vacation and when on vacation i read them a lot.
Bravo ~ I definitely want to achieve the same goal of having all internet-based duties down to just 3 days of the week. Gosh, that’d be awesome. I can’t wait to see your willy-nilly future posts! =D
.-= Rachael´s last blog ..Tasty Tuesday: Veggie-Quinoa Burgers =-.
If I didn’t have this blog, man. I’d be so gone. I notice when I’m away from the net that I physically feel better (even when not exercising or changing my diet). Weird, eh? I fully support your internet diet. (And your plan for the site sounds just like what I did with mine! :3 )
.-= Ellie Di´s last blog ..National Eating Disorder Awareness Week =-.
Fanfreakintastic, man.
Seriously. I feel the same way – much less stress, better sleep, and no avalanche of emails even when you only check twice a day.
Curbing twitter wasn’t even really a problem, but damn if that isn’t my biggest vice. I need to implement a limit myself.
Kristen, Retro Chick, Fajr – good luck on your own e-diets!! It’s awesome, I hope you have as much luck as I did with it.
Rachael – It would be nice, wouldn’t it?!
Ellie Di – I wrote up all of my posts for the e-diet week ahead of time and then scheduled them. Maybe you could do that?
Alicia – I know, right!! On the internet diet, curbing Twitter use wasn’t a problem because I literally did not have the time to get involved in conversations. But now that I’m not limiting myself again, it’s super easy to get sucked into TweetDeck for hours!
I had surgery last November and a lot of my time now is focused online. Especially since I can’t do yoga and I’m not working as much. I am in need of this diet! Thanks!
.-= Karen @ Bobbins And Bombshells´s last blog ..Weekend Reading: Links a la Mode =-.