{"id":13246,"date":"2021-04-27T09:42:29","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T09:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/?p=13246"},"modified":"2021-04-27T10:34:16","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T10:34:16","slug":"lessons-learnt-from-turning-off-social-media-notifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/lessons-learnt-from-turning-off-social-media-notifications\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons learnt from turning off social media notifications"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As someone who loves to network and stay engaged with others, it may come as a surprise that I have my notifications switched off for Facebook (+ Messenger), Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn. Look how long it took you read through that list! Imagine all the notifications from 5 different platforms on top of emails – how am I supposed to switch off if there is always something requiring my attention?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For someone who is involved in a range of activities, I have had to develop myself to become more selfish<\/em> to have<\/p>\n\n\n\n

better control of my time.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I consider myself to be a generous person and love to offer my time to be of benefit to others when I can. However, in recent times, I realised that I was not carving out enough time for myself to decide what I want to do with my free time, rather than trying to slot breaks in between everything, which links in with my last reflection <\/a>on self-care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Feng<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

You might be thinking so how do you stay in contact with friends and family? I’ve actually found that it has helped me to be more<\/p>\n\n\n\n

intentional with relationships.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If I am having a conversation with a friend or family member, I know that I need to be more alert to continue the conversation or reply inbetween breaks in my work. It means that I have to go out of my way to check in on people because I am not always up-to-date with social media updates and actually pick up the phone to have actual real-time conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, I have found that this has been easier by <\/p>\n\n\n\n

separating the uses of my social platforms.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My Twitter and LinkedIn are for my “professional uses”; for societies\/activities mostly Facebook groups, Messenger and Whatsapp group chats; for personal uses, Whatsapp \/Snapchat for messaging friends\/family and then Instagram and FB for entertainment\/ staying up to date with others and acquaintances. This may sound complicated but for me it just works! It helps me use my time on my phone wisely and when I am posting, I try as much as possible not to cross-post across platforms, unless wanting to reach a range of audiences. I always say to people I could never be a “full-time influencer” because in my opinion, I would find it tiring, having to keep up appearances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, those who are closest to me, understand that if they need my immediate attention to just call me or Whatsapp, which I don’t have notifications turned off as that is the main way I stay in contact with Mum and Dad (though I have switched off read receipts).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I’ve spoken about how it has benefited me, but let’s take a moment for me to explore what have been some of the cons?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delayed responses <\/strong><\/p>For someone who likes to be in the loop 24\/7, I have surprised myself sometimes when I respond late sometimes and miss out on what could have been fruitful conversations or opportunities! Also, for me it is a courtesy to reply at least within the same day as much as I am able to, but I find because I spend less time on my phone so individual conversations get buried beneath group chats and don’t always scroll down to check.

However, saying that, I think I have begun to find the right balance in replying in my own time, in an acceptable period; rather than before where I was very much an “on-demand” person. This sounds great but actually there is a danger of being overused if there is an expectation of quick reply in some circles I’ve found in my experience.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"man-typing-out-an-email-on-laptop<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Spending more time on my emails!<\/strong><\/p>I have yet to go to the extent of switching off email notifications – let alone not having an email app on my phone. It’s actually a running joke that I email a lot more than I text; and often this backfires because I am more likely to get distracted seeing an email. When I have 30+ unread emails, I get stressed out and can actually waste a lot of time doing admin to clear out my inbox into respective folders, so I recognise this is something that I need to work on.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In summary, I think it is a practice that I will stick at for a while, as my way of organising myself and my activities<\/em><\/strong>. Of course, there are other platforms that I haven’t discussed such as Slack which I will keep on notifications on my laptop but not always on my phone, but to repeat the question I have to ask myself always<\/strong> is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this moment in time, what TRULY requires my attention?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for reading my insight – feel free to comment or message any thoughts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note for prospective students: if you are looking for more structured content on medicine applications\/ medicine at Cardiff or anything else, please head to my homepage<\/a> to find the links to all of my previous blogs<\/em> and a link to message me on Unibuddy where I am available all year round to assist your queries!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As someone who loves to network and stay engaged with others, it may come as a surprise that I have my notifications switched off for Facebook (+ Messenger), Instagram, Twitter, […]","protected":false},"author":1777,"featured_media":13247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[694],"tags":[1032,223],"class_list":["post-13246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-life","tag-reflections","tag-social-media"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13246"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13260,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246\/revisions\/13260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}