Twitip

Today Raena Jackson (@raena) tells us about her Twitter Diet. Raena is the Tech Editor at SitePoint.

I’m on a Twitter diet.

No, I’m not doing that thing where people tweet what they eat. What I mean is that I’ve discovered that it’s time for me to start consuming less Twitter.

Really! Less Twitter.

Huh?

First, a bit about me. I’m not a branding expert, a marketing guru, or anything else. I’m just a regular everyday kind of gal. I’ve been using Twitter now since late 2006 – yeah, oldschool! – as a personal social tool rather than for work. When I moved to another state in 2007, Twitter was a great way to make new local friends while keeping in touch with folks back home. I’d also started following a big pile of various people and services along the way, like my local radio station or a feed from a blog I liked.

Before I knew it, I was following hundreds of people, had gotten into the habit of leaving Twitter open all day, and found it incredibly easy to become distracted from other activities. I’d skim through the Twitter stream, not really reading very closely, or even just declare bankruptcy and mark all as read – either way I’d just wind up feeling like I’m missing out on something very cool.

I’d occasionally tell myself I needed to have a break from reading Twitter throughout the day, which I’d stick to – only then to find that I’d follow that up with a Twitter binge of a few hours, trying to catch up on everything I’d missed through the day.

In February, when Wired Magazine asked if we’re losing our ability to concentrate, I didn’t find that hard to believe at all one bit. In Twitter, I’m standing in the middle of one big party with ten, twelve, twenty conversations going on at once, with my attention scattered between several, and none of them have my full and undivided concentration. Not only that, but there’s a Facebook party to go to, a Flickr party down the street… oh, and the real world!

For me, using Twitter this way has been as if I were keeping snacks in my kitchen. If I did that, I’d just sit there and eat snacks all day instead of taking the time to prepare a decent lunch. Snacks are great fun, and they’re easy. Some lucky souls can eat snacks all day with no ill effects, but for me, that’s a surefire way to poor health.

So, I’ve decided to approach my Twitter use the same way I might approach taking a diet. What I’m hoping to achieve from my Twitter diet is to reduce the amount of time and concentration I need to spend on Twitter, and increase the quality of of what I’m reading on it… and most of all, avoid actually quitting it cold turkey. If I can stick with it for a couple of weeks, I hope to be able to get into some better habits about how I make Twitter part of my daily life.

What I’m doing

Just like starting a real diet, a Twitter diet means I need to make some changes to my environment and my habits. Here’s what I’ve been doing.

Hide all the junk food

If I were starting a real diet, I’d go through my refrigerator and remove all the tempting snack foods and treats, like chocolate biscuits, fatty salami, or beer. That way if I wanted an unhealthy snack, I’d have to spend the time going to the supermarket to buy more, instead of just mindlessly grabbing whatever was handy.

For my Twitter diet, I’ve cleaned out the snacks and the temptations! I’ve completely deleted EventBox, Twitteriffic, and the other Twitter apps I had scattered about on my home computer and my iPod Touch. Then, I deleted the Twitter bookmark on my browser and the SMS number from my phone. Now, to use Twitter, I have to actually take the time to use the Web interface – and by the time I’ve typed ‘twitter’ into the browser’s address bar, it’s enough time to stop and ask myself if that’s really a good idea.

Smaller portions

Lots of real life diets involve removing or reducing certain foods from your diet. For my Twitter diet, I’ve gone on a big unfollow spree and trimmed the number of people I’m following down to 110 – for me, that’s a pretty small number. Most of those 110 people are people I actually know from outside the Twitterverse, plus a few interesting accounts from journalists or cartoons that I like.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m missing out on those people entirely – for those people I chose to unfollow, they’re mostly people or services I can still follow in other ways. Some of them are Facebook or Flickr friends, or their blogs are in my RSS reader; for anyone else I can just subscribe to their Twitter accounts’ RSS feeds and read later at my leisure. Sure I’ll miss some context or immediacy, but while I’m on my Twitter diet, the most nutritious parts of their feeds are the links, jokes, and fun observations.

I’ve also now changed my reply settings to ‘Show only @replies to people I’m following.’ Previously I’d chosen to receive everyone’s @replies, because it was a cool way to catch parts of interesting conversations and thus find new people to follow – but on my Twitter diet, excluding those other @replies reduces the volume of my stream, and the temptation to start following more people.

Private account

Seeing new followers turn up is a really tempting excuse to go check out their feed, their friends, and a bunch of links… not anymore. To try and discourage new followers for now, I’ve changed my account to private, and changed my Twitter profile background image to a message telling people that I’m having a Twitter break. The background is partly a reminder to myself to stick to the plan, cause I’ll see it every time I log in to the Web interface. It’s also a polite way to let people know that I’m not going to be receptive to new followers in that period.

Filter the emails

I’m a big fan of filtering emails, preferring to keep my Inbox only for messages that I’d like to act on right away. Previously, emails about new followers ot direct messagess would fall into that ‘right now!’ category – everyone loves to hear about a new fan! – but while I’m on my Twitter diet, they’re being filtered out into a separate folder. Now that my profile is private I don’t really expect to acquire too many new followers, but by removing the emails from my inbox I’ll have one less excuse to have a Twitter snack.

Keep a notebook

I’ve missed keeping a regular, detailed blog. A large part of that is because it’s so easy to just Tweet the ideas that pop into my head, and receive the instant gratification of equally instant responses from my followers. That’s fun, but it’s not the same as carefully articulating an idea, and reading detailed, thoughful feedback from blog readers.

The problem there is that it’ll be really hard to resist the temptation to just blurt everything out. So instead of tweeting these ideas, I’m keeping a notebook to jot down all those little opinions and ideas – just one or two-line thoughts, which are great starting points for blog post ideas, and hopefully this in turn will give me more incentive to write.

How’s that working out for you?

I’ve only been doing this for a few days, but I’m already noticing a big difference in the way I’m dealing with Twitter. I’m spending less time reading my stream while getting a lot more value out of it, while I’ve already got some great ideas for new blog posts (like this one!). And, just like a good diet should improve your eating habits for when you’ve finished, I’m hoping that this Twitter diet will improve the quality of my tweeting once I get back into the swing of things.

Have you ever felt like you needed to take a Twitter diet? What do you do?

Raena Jackson Armitage made her way to SitePoint via a circuitous route involving web de-velopment, training, and speaking. A lifelong Mac fangirl, she’s written for The Mac Observer and About This Particular Macintosh. Raena likes knitting, reading, and riding her bike around Melbourne in search of the perfect all-day breakfast. Raena’s personal web site is at http://raena.net.