The Single Biggest Thing Preventing Me From Doing More Writing Is...

As I’ve frequently lamented in my yearly themes (although not this year), I would like to get myself to write more. And back on December 1, 2022, I tried to commit to #100DaysOfBlogging, but that hasn't worked out so well.

I’ve been watching how I spend my time lately, and to I’m sure the surprise of absolutely NO ONE, including myself, it would seem the single biggest thing preventing me from doing more writing is… getting distracted by social media! 🤣🤣🤣

Take this morning. I was awake early at around 5:00am (courtesy of our wonderful but early-rising dog) and I sat on our couch drinking some tea and browsing through Mastodon (you can find me there). About 1.5 hours later, I’d read some great commentary, found some new articles to share, engaged in some conversations, and generally had an enjoyable time interacting with people.

But… could part of that time have been better spent getting some writing done?

I struggle with this, because on the one hand I learn things from social media that are then useful in new articles or other work. It’s “research” of one form. And engaging with people in an online community is a good thing to do.

But on the other hand, I find myself doing this a bit too much.

I’ll note, of course, that THIS IS NOT A NEW ISSUE FOR ME! In fact, I can easily scan my archives and find I’ve been writing more or less this same kind of post for ** 15 years **! 🤦‍♂️

• 2008 - Paying Yourself First - Starting the day with blogging…  (email, work deadlines, and Twitter were seen as issues)
• 2011 - On The Need To FOCUS In Our Age Of Hyper-Distraction… (Google+, Facebook, Twitter)
• 2012 - Barriers to Blogging - #1 - Distraction By Facebook, Twitter, News, Internet (everything! 😀)
• 2013 - Every Minute You Spend Consuming Content Is A Minute You Are Not Creating Content (everything)
• 2015 - The Tension Between Consumption and Creation of Content (a.k.a. spending time reading Facebook doesn't help with writing)
• 2018 - Revisiting a Not-So-New Rule - No Social Media Usage Until I Have Created Something New 
• 2023 - This post (where I mention Mastodon)

The common theme through all of that is… “I’ve got to change… I’ve got to not get so sucked into <whatever services>”.

And yet I do. 

The siren song of distraction is incredibly strong.

Perhaps this is the thing where I’ll keep shouting about it in the hopes that eventually by saying it enough I will make it happen in my life.

Or perhaps in 2033 I’ll be writing the same basic post again, lamenting how much time I spend with some new service. 🤣

P.S. And I don’t even mention TikTok, which seems to be wired into my brain in a way that whenever I open up the app it is then an hour or so later when I emerge again! (Hence why I don’t open it all that often.)