One of my 2019 goals is to spend way less time on social media. When the idea to take every other week of 2019 off of Instagram came to me, it felt like such a not-normal idea. Not normal for what life says is normal these days, and for me, as a social media loving human. It seemed hard. My excuse for always being on socials was “but I have a business I need to tell the world about!”. Yes, I would do social media marketing, but honestly, I mostly was constantly scrolling with no real plan in mind. So this challenged seemed challenging, as challenges are. But then I remembered the time in 10th grade when someone dared me to be a vegetarian for a week and I lasted an entire year. So I guess challenges are kinda my thing.

My first #InstaOffWeek was a little tough. It was basically a time to retrain my brain to not immediately click on Instagram and start scrolling when I grabbed my phone. It was second nature to do that. I actually think I had become addicted. I’ve had 3 “off weeks” so far, going into my 4th, and it gets easier every time. Here are some positive things I’ve noticed my time away from Instagram has taught me:

• There is WAY less comparing my day/kid/life/business to other people’s. Space to live my own life, ya know?
• It gives me time to clear my head. I process the day’s events without feeling the need to talk about it on social media while it’s still happening. Similarly, the time away given me perspective on what and how much to share.
• This is the best: I’ve been SO productive. The time I usually spend on Insta (and by now you realize it was a LOT of time), I’ve instead spent reading more – my own books, but also to Julien. I’ve been leaning into my hobbies like embroidering, blogging (HI!) and journaling. And also just resting my brain more! These are things I’ve always wished I had “more time to do”, the difference now is I’m intentionally choosing to use my time to do those things.
• I think this is the most interesting finding so far: The time away has given what I DO share during my ‘on’ weeks much more purpose and focus. I don’t feel the need anymore to post something to just to have SOMETHING there. I’m thinking about my content more, and honestly, it gives me more satisfaction knowing that I am creating this quality feed verses throwing random stuff up just to stay in the algorithm. Yeah, I know, it’s weird that I even had to think like that it the first place. That’s social media, I guess.
  
  

So among all the Pros there is also one Con to not being on Insta as much! I obviously follow a lot of my longtime friends, and though we don’t communicate personally every day, it IS nice to keep in touch daily via socials. I always pick Instagram over Facebook to do this, so I definitely feel like I’ve been missing out on some moments over these last weeks.

That being said, I plan on sticking with my plan of being off Insta every other week for 2019. Maybe I’ll add Snapchat and Twitter into the mix one of these weeks (though I do find that those generally aren’t as big time sucks as the ‘Gram is.)

Let me know if you end up doing your own “time off” challenge! I would love to hear how it goes and what you learn!