One quick check of Facebook or Twitter, it’s easy to be lost for 15 minutes in a world of fascinating news, funny videos and the opinions and plans of people you don’t know well.
But those “quick checks” add up throughout the workday, turning into a compulsive behavior that takes a toll on productivity.
I write about social media every week, but it takes discipline to not get myself sucked into its grasp when I have a job to do. And I don’t always succeed.
So at what point does one need to check into Facebook rehab? Ask yourself how much of your workday is being taken up by constantly checking the site. And how much value does it add to your day by constantly commenting to people you’re not close with?
One tool to fight the addiction is called Quickrr Facebook Rehab. If you’re using the Google Chrome Internet browser, it’s a free download that will let you set a limit on how much time you can spend poking around the site. (But the countdown clock keeps ticking even if you’re logged on another tab in the background, so you will have to close Facebook to stop the timer.)
However it might be more useful to use the tool to calculate how much time you’re spending a day browsing Facebook. How quickly do you hit the one-hour mark? Two hours? Hit it before lunch, and you should take some action to wean yourself from the distraction.
_ If you have Facebook on your phone, turn off notifications and text message alerts. Getting a text message ping that someone wants to be your friend shouldn’t send you scurrying to the site. There are more than a dozen unnecessary alerts Facebook can send to get you to drop what you’re doing and go back to the site,…