I joined Facebook on June 3rd 2007 and I have been on Facebook pretty much every day ever since. That’s six consecutive years or more than 2.000 days now and it has become an integral part of my life. I get my news from Facebook. I stay connected with friends and acquaintances and communicate via Facebook. And I get to know about events in my area. It has become a habit to check Facebook first thing in the morning and several times during the day when sitting on the toilet or waiting in line.

And now I am deactivating my Facebook account on October 1st 2013. In case you are interested why, let me explain:

First of all, let me say it again: “I am going to DEACTIVATE my Facebook account”. I am NOT going to delete it. Does this mean I am thinking about activating it again? Yes, I do!

FROM HABIT TO ADDICTION

Last week, I met with a good friend of mine and somehow we started to talk about how Facebook and other social media channels such as Twitter or communication apps such as What’s App actually prevent us from being productive. I more and more noticed this about myself the last couple of weeks. In the morning I’d fired up Facebook on my Laptop during breakfast and the next time I checked the watch it was 3pm. And this didn’t happen just once but several times recently.

Now my friend told me that he was thinking about deactivating Facebook because pure willpower or other precautions such as bookmarking your timeline to not see and get lost in the newsfeed didn’t really work either. If you know me just a little, you might know that such an endeavor intrigues me and since my last screenwriting quarter at UCLA, where I’ll have to write a feature length script (90-120 pages) in 10 weeks, starts on October 1st, I thought this is the best time to do this experiment.

This means I’ll deactivate my Facebook account in the morning of October 1st 2013. Facebook for sure is the biggest distractor but I want to include other social medias as well. This includes especially Twitter, Google+, Tumblr and Instagram. I not only will delete all these apps from my iPhone but I also installed the K9 Web Protection filter software on my laptop that blocks all social media channels. Additionally, it also conveniently blocks all porn as well as dating sites such as suggested by me in my blog post The 120 Days Without Porn Challenge on my Sex God Project blog. You can only unblock these websites with an administrator’s password, that only my roommate knows and she was instructed to keep it safe from me until the end of the year.

There is two exceptions though. I am still doing my Sex God Project and will further blog and post status updates on the Sex God Project Facebook Page, Twitter and the Sex God Project Google+ Page as well as posting updates on the Facebook Page Untitled Feature Film Project where I document the progress of my screenplay. In order to post on these sites I use a service called Buffer that allows we to post updates without having to access the actual sites.

THE INFORMATION DIET

But I won’t just stop there. I just finished reading the book The Information Diet by Clay Johnson. He draws interesting parallels between the food we consume and the information we consume. You can check out an introduction video here.

Information over-consumption does not only steal time but as he also points out (mental) energy that then is not available for e.g. being creative. Furthermore, it shatters attention making it harder to focus on just one task for too long which makes it impossible to get into a flow like state where the creative magic happens. And if that were not already enough, it even has physical consequences thanks to (screen) apnea which means that when we work in front of a screen or consume information while sitting, our breathing becomes more shallow which leads to less oxygen intake thus a decrease in mental power.

So, I will not only do a social media sabbatical but I’ll go on an information fast and try to figure out what an appropriate information diet looks like for me.

I want to consciously reflect on what articles, blogs, magazines and books I am reading, what music I am listening to and what movies I am watching and what value these information have both for me personally and/or my (artistic) work. For that I’ll journal about every information that I’ll consume to get an overview and become aware of what I am feeding my brain on a daily basis. I then will practice selective ignorance as described by Tim Ferris in his book The 4-Hour Work Week. I also want to use the time to figure out how to most effectively and valuably use social media in the future and I think that’s best done by not using it for a certain amount of time first.

INFORMATION METABOLISM

I also want to further set-up and refine my daily navigator apps with e-mail, calendar, tasks and notes. I’ll limit checking my e-mails to once a day and unsubscribe from every newsletter that I never read in the first place but that just burns mental energy by figuring out what to do with it. I want to set up my task program Omni Focus to see tasks that are contextually relevant either by time or space as suggested in the books Getting Things Done by David Allen and Creating Flow with Omni Focus by Kourosh Dini, M.D. and being able to trust the system 100% so that I won’t burn unnecessary mental energy by constantly keeping things in my mind that are not presently relevant. I want to properly step-up a note, referencing and archiving system with Apple’s Note (short-term) and Evernote (long-term). I want to further refine my information flow with Pocket by collecting and tagging articles and videos curating them in one place for later consumption.

I’ll also turn of all instant notifications both on my laptop as well as my mobile devices. I’ll collect these in the notification center and consciously chose when I want to see them.

I also want to work less on my laptop and switch more to my mobile devices especially my iPad. Writing on the iPad may actually be better because I am not as fast as on a laptop which automatically makes it more conscious plus thanks to the limited possibilities of multitasking focusing on one task might be easier on an iPad than on a laptop.

HITTING THE MENTAL GYM

And just like I am exercising my body I also want to exercise my brain. Cognitive functions with Lumosity, language skills (in my case French) with Rosetta Stone and my ability to focus and be more present by daily meditation with Headspace.

It’s time to get conscious about my mind and what information I consume and create some healthy habits to increase my time, my cognitive abilities, my attention and my mental energy because these are my most valuable assets as an artist.

IT’S NOT THE END

This of course is not the end. As Arnold Schwarzenegger would say: “I’ll be back”. See you at the beginning of 2014 with at least a finished screenplay and a clearer mind.