I've been on a "get off the internet" kick lately.  My hot button has been to stop checking email fifty times per day, don't use facebook as a message center and abandon twitter for anything other than advertising my blog postings.  I don't do Yahoo chat/messenger and I shouldn't have started using twitter for the same reasons: they suck time out of you like a vampire squid sucks money out of the economy.

I recently created a Facebook page and signed up for Twitter.  Facebook I enjoy.  It helps me to keep up with peripheral friends and folks that have common interests, such as hunter jumper, fishing and my son's swimming.  However, I noticed I began spending way too much time checking for status updates and messages.  Scratch that activity.  Once a day, in the evenings or the next morning is often enough.  I check my e-mail often.  There is no reason to check Facebook everytime I check e-mail.

Twitter is like having Yahoo messenger open and 100 people chatting at the same time.  Plus, you can enter 140 character messages.  What I've found is that well worded tweets with embedded URL's are an excellent way to drive traffic to a web site.  However, staying on twitter using one of the twit programs is simply a good way to visit and waste time.  So, good bye interactive twitter.

So now, I am back to blogging.  Which means I am back to coding.  Which means I am back to thinking about things rather than jumping between Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.  It's time for my productivity to improve.

I found this rather humorous blog post which segways into a serious discussion of impulse behavior:

How to Check E-mail Twice a Day… or Once Every 10 Days