I confess, I’ve been guilty of using twitter as a broadcast only mechanism.  I have two main accounts and one of them is purely broadcast (I use tumblr to post links to Twitter and a Facebook business page–more on that experience).  But, inspired by this analysis of Marc Andreesen’s tweets during 2014, I was inspired to start using Twitter as a way to have conversation.  As of late December,  I’m committed to responding to at least one tweet when I open up Twitter.  Not a retweet, not a favorite, but an honest to god reply.

So far, I’ve enjoyed this.  If someone is tweeting out an article, it forces me to read the article critically.  If someone says something provocative, I can respond with a question.  I have started to unfollow people who just post links (like I did) because I’m looking for conversation.  Seeking conversation gets addictive pretty quickly.

The downside is that this takes more time.  Not much more (it’s only 140 characters after all) but more time.  Frankly, it can also be a bit scary to yell your opinion to the whole world (or at least that subsection of the world that is on Twitter and is reading your tweets, which is much smaller).  I do that on this blog all the time, but responses on Twitter are far less polished.

I know this is old hat to many Twitter users, but it is a new paradigm to me. I’d love to have stats on this to make myself more accountable, but I wasn’t able to find an easy way to show my Twitter usage (new tweets vs replys vs retweets)–does anyone know one?

I’ve tried a digital sabbath a few times in the past year.  If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it means taking one day a week and putting away all your digital devices.  No smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktop computers (do people still use those?  I do!).  For one day, I even skipped making phone calls.  Focus on the here and now.  Read a book.  Play with your kids.  Go outside.  Do that home improvement project you’ve been meaning to get to.  Look, there’s even a website about the digital sabbath!

I’ve done this a few times and it is tough.  Why?  If I have any questions about anything, I reach for my phone or tablet–when does Home Depot open?  How do I cook sunchokes?  That is relatively easy to counter–just prepare ahead of time, or accept not knowing.  I’ve even been known to pull out a copy of the white pages (yes, they still distribute that).

I also feel I am ‘maximizing’ my time–when I can read about Clojure or respond to tweets while brushing my teeth, I feel like I’m doubling my time.  It’s the same feeling I have when I run the washing machine and the dishwasher–I can sit on the couch and read because I’m ‘doing’ two jobs already!  So, a sabbath removes a major source of attention fragmentation.

The harder part of a digital sabbath is the non informational uses of my phone.  Frankly, I use my phone to escape boredom and frustration.  Of course, it is still entirely possible to ‘check out’ with a book or even daydreaming, but using a phone makes it so dang easy.  I think it is because it feels like you are accomplishing something worthwhile easily–gaining new knowledge, interacting with someone across the world.  Maybe because those use to be hard hard tasks–you had to check a book out of the library, or write someone a letter or make an expensive phone call.  Now the effort/reward has a radically decreased numerator, but my brain is still in the 1980s and doesn’t recognize it.

But.

While I can learn plenty and make plenty of friends through your phone/tablet/internet connected whatzit, a digital sabbath forces you to ive in the now and the here.  Escapism is fine in small doses, but a digital sabbath forced me to confront how often I use my phone for that purpose.