It’s been a busy week for me as I’ve made the transition back to campus to begin my fourth year here at the College of William & Mary. As I’ve been tied up with purchasing overpriced textbooks, running from one end of campus to the other, and preparing an honors thesis in psychology, social media has been temporarily set on the back burner. Fortunately for me, though, this sudden paradigm shift from ample time to little has provided a more accurate perspective on what works and what doesn’t in the social media world when time is tight.
Social media fills holes
One of the first things I’ve noticed, as I’m sure anyone with a 50-60 hour work week can attest, is that when free time is cut short, social media habits and hobbies are rapidly reduced. Social media becomes something to be attended to when all other responsibilities are fulfilled, kind of like an ever-present background process.
When free time is cut short, social media habits and hobbies are rapidly reduced.
What does this mean? Instead of having a chance to sit down and schedule out social media time, I’ve got to fit it in where I can: waiting in line for lunch, checking up on networks between classes, putting in a few minutes before going to bed, et cetera. This time compression makes one basic realization even more obvious.
Efficiency is critical
When time is limited, human beings have a tendency to go for the biggest bang for their buck. Whatever can provide the biggest return on a minimal investment of time is reinforced with each passing experience.
In particular, here are some of the low-investment, high-reward inputs that have worked well for me over the last few days:
- FriendFeed’s best of day and week feature lets me narrow down the day’s content to what matters most to the people I trust.
- Google Reader list view allows me to scan for important headlines and star items to return to later.
- Facebook helps me keep in touch with my friends and acquaintances across campus, all of whom I’m extremely likely to bump into.
As you probably know, all these services have excellent mobile applications as well, meaning I don’t need to be tethered to my desktop to access or utilize them.
What doesn’t work?
Unfortunately, when time is tight, even great services and experiences need to be dramatically scaled back if they’re not easily accessible and instantly gratifying. In particular, here’s what’s taking a hit on my docket:
- Activity on online social networks with few real-life contacts decelerates because I’m having more face-to-face interactions with my peers on a regular basis. There’s less of a need to seek opinions, entertainment, and fellowship with individuals I might know online because the same is available right outside of my door.
- Multimedia integration is cut way down because the sacrifice of bringing along a camera, camcorder, or other recorder is much too high, even if the device is ultra-portable.
- Blogging becomes more difficult because the opportunity cost of sitting down and carefully piecing together an article is increased; for instance, perhaps I ought to be reading the first chapter of a textbook instead of writing this entry!
As I wrote a while back, filtering is king in today’s noisy social media environment. When time is tight, not only do we rely on applications and services to filter for us, but we also engage in a more implicit, natural filtering of our own: discovering what does, and what doesn’t, work for us when free time becomes considerably scarcer.
When you’re busier than usual, what do you find are the first things to go?
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