Disconnect to reconnect: My weekend without social media

It´s true, social media is as evil as we allow it to be. We decide who to follow, how long we scroll around and how much we let that annoy us. And even though I try to follow only inspiring, educational and fun accounts and people, I still catch myself wasting time and feeling like I should do more. More traveling, more helping out, more sharing, more of everything.

First I highly recommend you take some time and unfollow accounts that are not making you feel good.

Second, turn off all push notifications. Why in the world would you do that to yourself?

And third, it´s time to reconnect with who we used to be before social media and phones made us less social. Before we knew every single detail about somebody´s weekend, before meeting them on Monday morning. It´s time to have weekends withour social media.

Here´s my plan

About a month ago I decided to turn the phone off from 9pm-11am. I don´t want the phone to be the last thing I look at before closing my eyes. Images of couples staring at their phones in bed are nothing but sad. I also don´t want my phone to be the first thing I look at in the morning, before even saying good morning to my boyfriend. So I turned it off, put old alarm clock back in action. I also try not to bring my phone to lunch.

If you think you spend max 30min per day on your phone, install one of the apps that track your screen time and you might be very surprised how many times you actually pick your phone up and how much of your precious time is wasted like that. Are you reaching for your phone every 30 min to check what´s happening, if you are missing anything? What about ever time there is a beautiful coffee or meal in front of you? Do you find yourself scrolling through Instagram (maybe Facebook or something else) for hours?

I got inspired by lovely DariaDaria to offload all social media apps (Instagram, Facebook, Youtube) from Friday evening to Monday morning. No more wasting time checking what other people are doing. It was time to take control of my time back. Time to have conversations on Monday, to have stories to tell, instead of Highlighting them on Instagram.

Social life without Social media

Saturday: I grabbed my phone a few times before I realized that there is nothing to there to check. Sometimes we put so many things on our to-do lists that they stress us out and it´s easier to grab a phone and forget all about them than to actually start doing them. So I went one by one and did some “home office” work that was piling up, paid some bills. Finished reading my book. Watched inspiring talks. Watched a movie that I had to stop a couple of times (it´s not easy to take all that in) “In the land of blood and honey“. Cooked and ate on the balcony while reading a book and not taking a single photo of my food. Danced around. And made plans for Sunday sunrise hike and yoga.

Sunday: Met friends at 4 am in the morning and we hiked to the top of Stodazinker mountain. Instead of taking phone photos I took my camera with me and decided to film the trip. My phone battery died anyway because it got pretty cold up there. But that was completely OK with me. It felt so good to connect with new people, talk, share stories, laugh, grow, learn and not share it with anyone that day.

We had coffee on top of the mountain while waiting for the sun to rise, doing a short yoga session to warm up and then having a delicious breakfast together. We came back home around 9:30 with the whole day left to do fun things. Music. Books. And guess what, I edited the video I filmed this morning. Something that would usually take me so long that would not even make sense to share it anymore.

Enjoy and keep in mind I´m a complete video editing rookie.

Don´t get me wrong, I love to share stories on Instagram, annoy you about all the things I care about. Hopefully, also inspire but definitely preach. I love to create, take and share photos. But more than on Instagram I love to talk to people in person, take photos with my analog or digital camera and learn how to play with light instead of Instagram filters.

I want to talk to you on Monday without knowing everything about your weekend already. Let´s disconnect from social media on the weekends, to reconnect, with ourselves and others again.

Mateja