A brief Twitter break

I’m going to give myself a Twitter break for at least two weeks.

In doing so, I realise I join a long list of people who have left Twitter to recover some sort of sanity. The endless stream of news and nonsense has finally got to me and this seems like a good time to step away.

First of all, I’m going to be in a cabin with little access to the internet for a while. So that will help. But I’m also extremely busy with work and there is no getting around the fact that Twitter is a time suck. It’s always been that way, of course. But it has previously felt useful too. Not at the moment.

In reality, I’ve been retreating for a while. With no book or podcast to promote, I’ve found myself tweeting less over the last couple of years. I can go a few days without posting to Twitter at all. And overwhelmed by the constant negative news stream, late last year I muted the words ‘Trump’ and ‘Brexit’.

Doing that did make my timeline a little easier to manage. However, despite not tweeting much, I’m still on there all the time. I read the same curated Twitter Lists I’ve had going for years. It’s where I go in moments of boredom and procrastination. And honestly, I don’t think it’s especially good for my wellbeing.

So basically, I’ve removed Tweetbot from my laptop. And on my phone, I am going to remove my personal Twitter account. I’ll keep the app itself because I need to access a client’s profile. But that’s fine. I will just pop on and do what I need to do then buzz off again.

I expect to be back on Twitter in mid-August, but you never know how these things will turn out. I’ve been using the platform daily for about 10 years, which is absolutely bonkers. And as they say, a change is as good a rest.

Let’s see how it goes.