I’ve been guilty of checking Twitter almost habitually at every free moment. It’s like I expect something new and interesting to be happen every five minutes - it doesn’t.

Recently I tried limiting my Twitter exposure to set times during the day: once in the morning, once at lunch and once after work. I found that this really reduced the mental stress of constantly processing mostly useless information on Twitter. It also helped me to focus more on the few tweets I did care about and respond to them thoughtfully, instead of replying with smart-arse comments. Another benefit was that I was able to concentrate deeper on the actual work I had to do because I wasn’t constantly context-switching with Twitter.

It became clear that nothing happening on Twitter is all that important. This again made it much easier to stay way from it.

If you are habitually checking Twitter or some other form of social media, try and give yourself a schedule of when you can check for updates. You’ll soon realise that while these mediums maybe useful sometimes, more often than not, they are a complete waste of time.