It still kind of makes me chuckle when I read headlines in newspapers that refer to Facebook. I was in college when it came out and I remember joining with my uky.edu email address (don’t worry- I also had a louisville.edu address) so I have memories of the early days when it really did revolve around your relationship status and ‘poking’ someone was a way for insecure college kids to initiate a conversation with the person that you thought was cute in your bio 101 class. My how times change.
When I read about the changes to the news feed that will prioritize posts from family and friends, it made me think about a post that I wrote back in November 2017 about a way I was modifying the Facebook news feed to help me to be more productive.
Finding ways to be more productive is kind of a hobby of mine and chatting about it is kind of part of the mission of YesLouisville.com. I love to find ways to be more effective in my life and, even more, I love to share these tricks and tips with other people and see them start living better and with more enjoyment. There is a good feeling that comes from finding a solution to a problem a little quicker. And something that I and a lot of other people struggle with is getting sucked into the Facebook news feed.
If you run a business then you know the importance of social media to market your company. You kind of have to be online during your work day to make posts and respond to people. But the lure of the news feed is real. It’s seductive. It sucks you in. And before you know it, you’ve spent 15 minutes down a scrolling hole that seems to have come out of nowhere. We’ve all done it.
But guess what?
It’s designed to do that. I can only imagine the time and money that Facebook spends on figuring out ways to keep users on their site longer and longer.
But there is a tool that can help. If you use the Chrome browser there is a handy little extension you can install called the ‘News Feed Eradicator‘. And it’s gloriously simple. It replaces the Facebook news feed with an inspirational quote. So you can do what you need to do on Facebook and get out without the mindless time suck that it can cause.
Simply having the option to toggle the feed is fantastic. Flip it on when you want to be intentional and get down to business and turn it off when you’re ready to re-engage with your homies.
Give it a try and see what it does for you. And please share this tip with your friends- they may need it more than you know!