I took the month of March off social media and avoided news to recalibrate and give myself a rest. I did the same in 2020 and found the experience especially rewarding during such a stressful period.

Since I’m back, I thought I would share a few takeaways.

Hardly anyone noticed. Only a handful of people contacted me about my hiatus, don’t worry; my feelings didn’t get hurt. It makes you question the social aspect of social media; we really are slaves to algorithms that keep feeding us and distracting us from our actual friends. Are you paying attention?

Surprisingly, I only saw a slight decrease in referral traffic from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to this blog and site and my business site and blog at futureforth.com.

Moving forward, I’ve decided to comment before I like something I see on social media. This means I plan to engage with you much more again. I need to practice what I preach and put the social back into social media.

I’m avoiding the rabbit holes. I have scheduled one hour a day max for social media. This might be done in two thirty-minute increments AM/PM on some days. I will use Freedom to block myself from accessing such sites for the rest of each day to focus on my business, family, and friends.

I quietly celebrated 1,000 days sober during my break. I also resisted posting photos and videos from my recent trips to London, Scotland, and the 12-mile hike we did with friends. Starting today, you can find that #latergram content on my Instagram.

I highly recommend you give your mind a rest. Social media isn’t what it used to be. Nowadays, it’s even hard to know if you’re corresponding with a real person because of bots and the advances of AI. I will focus much more on in-person encounters and actual friendships (with all due respect to my many acquaintances). 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of friendship for some time; I recommend you listen to my chat with Professor Robin Dunar of Dunbar’s Number fame (which I wrote about in my book, New Business Networking) about this topic. He wrote a thought-provoking and data-rich book all about the topic, Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships. I recommend it!

Have you taken digital detox breaks? What was your experience like? 

My biggest takeaway from 2022 was to slow down and focus on perspective. What I learned directly resulted from a steady practice of mindfulness and meditation. The revelation came as I strolled along the lower trail of a State Park.

Radnor Lake is an over 1,300-acre nature preserve on the edge of Nashville. It has always been a favorite since moving to Music City in 2007. I’ve strolled along the tranquil lake paths and up to the more challenging cliffs many times with friends, family, and on my own. It was on my own when the thought of putting things in perspective hit home.

I suddenly felt melancholy and sadness as I noticed young children frolicking around me. It occurred to me that our kids are now teenagers, and the days of entertaining our young ones through the forest were gone. I was feeling lonely.

A lack of connection causes loneliness and is synonymous with perceived social isolation, not objective social isolation. Even living among people you love, you can still feel lonely. My challenges with anxiety weren’t helping me at that moment.

I noticed how happy the parents looked as they laughed at their kids being silly, bouncing through the leaves, and climbing the trees. I asked myself why I was feeling sad. The answer made me realize that my chosen emotion needed to be corrected. It wasn’t sadness that I should be feeling but happiness, but why happiness?

• Happy that these random parents and their children were having fun around me.

• Happy that I took our kids through these same trails many times when they were little.

• Happy that our kids now have memories of their own and enjoy such hikes in their later teenage years.

• Happy that I did this with our kids. I chose to take them on these walks through the woods.

This occasion of walking alone in the woods triggered my reflection, which led to the revelation. I realized that true sadness would be warranted if I had never taken them on the trails. If I had never spent time playing with them through those woods, that regret and sadness would make sense to me.

Slowing down and going for the hike helped me clear my head. The power of perspective made me realize it was a time to celebrate. I remember smiling and feeling great joy as I continued my hike along Radnor Lake.