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On Wednesday last week (2nd June) I decided to ignore Twitter for a month. This isn’t down to any sort of antipathy towards it but I thought it would be an interesting exercise because…
Withdrawl symptoms – It’s been such an integral part of my online world that I was beginning to forget why I used it. I felt a month away would sharpen my ideas up and help me use it more productively when I came back to it (assuming I do). I think it’s safe to assume that Twitter will continue fine without me while I’m gone 
.
Time – Because I have such ready access to it, the temptation is always there. I’ve found myself checking Twitter when I should be spending more time talking to my wife or playing with my kids. Also, my staring-out-of-the-train-window time has dropped and that’s usually my best thinking time. I want to recapture that. If I’m being honest as well there have been a few times when I’ve used it to avoid doing some much more important things I’d rather have avoided.
Identity – I’ve been thinking a lot about personal identity and its role in learning and being part of a community of practice recently, ever since hearing Etienne Wenger speak a few weeks ago. Increasingly, Twitter WAS my community of practice rather than something that helped me mediate it. What I mean by that is that I’d fallen into the habit of tweeting more flippant stuff than contributing helpfully to the network. I’m interested to see how not using Twitter affects the way that I work and what and who I focus on now.
I’m still going to be blogging and using AudioBoo when I can (and I’m aware of the inconsistency that I’ve still got auto-tweets set up from these but I’m OK with that) and I’ll reflect in a month’s time on how it’s gone. I fully expect to fall off the wagon a few times and it may be that I have to use it for things to do with Netskills. I’ll blog again in a few weeks to reflect on what happened.
It’s sort of like putting myself in the petri dish with some agar jelly and seeing what develops. Hopefully not some sort of slime mould…
5 Comments until now
Will you be able to do it cold turkey – maybe you should wean yourself off? Cut your characters down from 140 to say 80, then less each week
I’d like to hear your opinion on the whole html5 vs. flash debate. Basically apple don’t want flash on their iphones/pads as they will no longer be able to charge for the garbage in the apps store. As you might be able to tell – I’m siding with adobe.
Good luck with it Chris! Will miss you, as you’re one of the few people who seems reply to my queries
I find I do waste too much time on it, but I’ve been very good at keeping it as a work thing. I very rarely check it outside of work – though now I have a shiny iPhone with Twitter app that might change.
Aaron,
Siding with Adobe? You? Wonder will never cease etc.
Not sure I’ve got anything useful to add to the HTML5 debate really, but mobile stuff’s going to be a developing theme for me, so who knows.
Yes, I’m quite guilty of work/life fuzziness so there’s a bit of wanting to be a better husband/daddy.
What app did you go for? I used Tweetdeck for a long while but gave up after it started crashing every so often. The official Twitter one seems to be working quite well, though.
PS, must get you to do a guest post at some point!
I went for the Twitter app, seems ok, but not really used it yet. Trying not to become an iPhone bore, but I do like the thing.
Ooh guest post, that’d be exciting, let me know.
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