Anjan Pathak October 9, 2020 Staying indoors 24/7?
Isn’t everyone? With the coronavirus posing a threat to our families and us, the decision to stay at home is by far the wisest one.
Understandably, being on house quarantine requires certain forms of activities to do for when we are bored and also when we’re not bored.
In both cases, the answer largely seems to be social media.
Even if we do not admit it, deep inside, we know that it has become an addiction. The first and the last activity of the day involves us logging onto either Facebook or Instagram.
However, social media has its uses- in both positive and negative ways.
It provides us with vast information about everything happening around the world. Expressing views, socializing & interaction are a few of the most frequent activities we do on social media.
Connecting people is one of the key features for which people use social media.
I’m sure all of you like to keep yourself updated with the various trends which are easily revealed via social media. It works as a form of entertainment with people posting updates, photos, and videos of their everyday lives & activities.
There are several examples of social media sites where Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are generally deemed to be the true giants.
You want to be in touch with friends, you go to Facebook.
You want to scroll through your feed and see people posting about food, places, and everything, in the form of pictures and videos, you log into Instagram.
You are fond of micro-blogging and wish to send and receive posts from your favorite personalities, you sign up on Twitter.
You might love to binge on funny standups, cooking recipes, catch up with your favorite content creators, and even watch an hour or two of random Youtube videos.
The list is never-ending. With each day, we are introduced to new platforms and get absorbed into it.
Besides, these days, social media is the easiest access to any kind of news. No wonder we spend almost all of our waking hours glued to one device or the other.
But what happens when you engage yourself too much with it?
You get carried away and devote all your attention to it. As a consequence, this recreational tool can prove to be a giant time-suck if not handled with care. Especially amidst the whole pandemic situation, where everyone is holed up in their homes & working remotely, social media can have a dreary impact on productivity.
On a normal day, you are working on an assigned task, and a notification pops up on your cell phone, you check it immediately. This creates a form of distraction by breaking the flow as your mind is drawn to your phone now.
And in no time, you will find yourself scrolling through the newsfeed.
Once your work is interrupted, it takes a great deal of will power to bring your attention back to the task.
Also, you might have noticed that in the lockdown period, your time spent on social media activities has heightened.
By the increase in the number of people working from homes, avoiding the temptation of social media is more likely to be challenging. It is quite obvious to happen as there is some form of social isolation during remote working, and social media can help you with that.
In such a situation, maintaining a strict routine & developing self-control becomes a necessity. Dealing with digital distractions is harder than it sounds.
For one, turn off the alerts.
You do not want to find yourself checking into your favorite Youtube artist’s new interesting content in between your work just because a notification popped up, alerting you about the same.
Alternatively, there might be some cricket match going on, and your cell phone keeps sending updates of the scores. It will surely draw your attention if you do not want it to.
As a result, your work gets compromised.
Scrolling through news feeds and timelines takes a whole lot of energy and time. You might get totally engrossed in it without even realizing it. This hampers your productivity and worsens the work culture, which is why you need to avoid this habit.
Using social media, surely, is enjoyable for as long as it does not get in the way of your work.
This is when turning your alerts off will definitely do a great deal to keep your focus intact.
Once it’s off, notifications of all the social media platforms will not appear until you log on to the respective sites.
So long as you are not bothered by the notifications, you would not even know what is going in the digital world. Due to which you are free to dedicate all your concentration to your work.
Prioritizing work is extremely important
You need to make a list of priorities during work and stick to that. If you do not prioritize your work and assign a specific time to specific tasks, you are bound to get induced by distractions.
In doing so, you would have to have some self-control over your desires. If you are not determined enough to achieve targets, the list and shutting off your phone would do no good.
Because in one way or another, you would find your way back to them.
You cannot let your mind be at two places at once. While working from home, if all you can think about is that movie review your friend is going to put up an update about, or how much your views have increased for a video sharing on your timeline, then trust me, you are heavily diverted.
This way, your productivity hits rock bottom.
Thus, developing self-control is crucial in these times.
Allocating your social-networking time
How many breaks do you take when working remotely?
Pretty few, I guess.
There might be certain hours of the day when you require some space from work. This could be the time you can dedicate to social networking platforms.
Amid the hectic schedule, a simple conversation with your childhood friend, or reading a particular news article on a recent incident may turn out to be refreshing.
These days, all newspaper channels have their corresponding pages and profiles on various social media sites. It provides users with easy access to every kind of news relevant to every topic under the sun.
Therefore, utilizing your breaks to keep yourself updated with such information is harmless and stimulating.
Resort to other applications
If you discover that no other way is proving efficient enough for you to concentrate on your work, you have to resort to other means.
At a time as such, some newly developed social media blockage applications can act as the last resort.
People who suffer from social media addiction could use these social media blockage applications. Thes are available for both computers and cellphones.
The primary aim of this software is to block certain apps for a specific period of time while others track the amount of time you spent on these apps, which can be a huge wake-up call.
You would realize how much of your productive time is wasted on social media and start working on it.
In this way, you can set daily limits to your frequently-used social media sites. Once your limit is over, you would be logged out of the apps automatically.
Few of these blockage applications are-
- Moment
- AppBlock
- Freedom
- Self-control
- Flipd
It seems quite easy once you put your mind and heart into it. Everything is possible with a little touch of self-restraint.
Work from home can be extremely difficult when you have such distractions flowing in every second. That is why a good approach is necessary to make your hours count. Otherwise, all of it would be worth nothing, and your efforts and hard work would go in vain.
Social media is a weapon of relaxation that might turn into a huge distraction when used within your working hours.
Therefore, keeping your social media activities and professional work separated is the ultimate solution to producing better results. Focusing on one task at a time is the key.
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