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Facing a very stressful week, I decided not to use Twitter beginning with monday morning.

I integrated Twitter in my daily life during the last months. It became a powerful and easy-to-use-wherever-you-are communication interface to me, i. e. when using pub trans I usually read and wrote tweets on my mobile phone. So I stopped abruptly with this  behaviour on monday having two major goals: saving some time that I need other non-communicative tasks and the other one was of course to find out, how much influence on my life Twitter already gained.

The first thing worked quite well. Twitter is still a dispensable communication tool. It’s easy to use other devices / interfaces to talk to the people you need to talk to.

The second goal I already miserably failed. Twitter is an attention drawing service. First, I switched off the IM functions. Since then, my Jabber client seems to be dead - compared to the weeks before. Then, I tried not to go on m.twitter.com when waiting for a bus or the subway. In lieu thereof, I read newspapers online sites. And I was pretty bored, since not much happened there when I pressed »reload«.

On tuesday, I saw a scene at the tram I thought to be very funny. I could have told the other passengers of the tram that I think it’s funny. I could have screamed it out. I could have made some real noise. I did not do it.

But I would have done on twitter. I would have told people about it. But this time, I didn’t. Sometimes, I miss Twitter. But not twittering seems to save a lot of time.

I did not switch off email notifications. And during this week, some real new followers appeared. In a short period of mental derangement, I once even clicked on “follow this user”. I was so used to this procedure..

I think I will return to Twitter on Monday. Even though it’s a mess and waste of time. And I will write a follow-up, too.

Tags: Communication, twitter