Before Downloading, Ask Yourself How Long the New App Will Take in Your Life.
I’m not on TikTok. Even as a casual observer. I don’t spend much time on Instagram or Facebook these days. I have a Twitter account, although it is for recording only at the moment ; I am also a part of professional and social Slack, and in the latter case I deliberately limit myself to only a few channels available.
Of all the streaming media services, I only subscribe to Amazon Prime Video, although I subscribed to Netflix in December to watch holiday specials (closed my account well before January). My watchlist on Amazon is already longer than I think I can ever get through, and I really don’t feel like I need more streaming sites to remind me of everything else I don’t watch.
Because I’m busy enough anyway.
Switching subscriptions between Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, or limiting yourself to certain social media accounts or Slack channels is one way to control the amount of content and engagement that reaches you on any given day.
Another way is not to subscribe to anything that takes more time than you can give.
As Seth Godin recently wrote about creating new social media accounts :
While one of these takes only a minute to open, it promises hours (or hundreds of hours) of future interaction.
And it adds up.
Godin calls this “engagement debt,” and the idea is that every new product, service, application, or tool you bring into your life takes up a little of your time. Yes, some products and services are designed to save time, but you still have to spend time interacting with these products and going through the learning curve. Other products were theoretically designed to save time (like email and Slack), but now they’ve expanded to things that take up most of our day .
So the next time you are thinking of subscribing to another streaming media service, sleep tracking app, or social network, ask yourself how much time you want to devote to it.
Or, as I wrote on this very site: work backwards from the life you want , and then find the tools, applications and services that support that life.