Are you spending WAY too much time on social media sites? How do you know?
Okay, if you’re curating cat videos for hours at a time instead of working that could be a problem. But building relationships on social sites is an important part of growing your business. How much is too much?

Several clients have told me recently that they waste too much time on social media when they should be doing something more productive. Let’s take a look at that.

In order to make realistic and long-lasting behavior changes we need data about what we really do– like a food log when you want to lose weight. Dieters track everything they eat and sometimes how they are feeling to learn how they use food.

If you think you need to start a Social Media Diet you need to log the actual time you spend using it and what you are doing.

I recommend gathering information for 5 days to a week, but at least 3 days.

This should be a judgment-free zone. Use the sites as you want to. Don’t try to be disciplined– just your regular usage. Capture the real picture of what you are doing.

I believe that some of the time you think you are wasting is actually constructive if you count it as recreation. Chris Bailey, author of A Life of Productivity, says to schedule ample brain-wandering time. (He recommends nature walks or extra-long showers, NOT internet time, but I think a certain amount of inspiration can be found while surfing).

I’ve created this simple log form to get you started.*

For intention you would put something like “daily post on Twitter, or update FB status.” Major activity could be catching up with friends, what famous ___ are you quizzes,  research. Ideas and contacts could just be the count of them or a brief description if you wanted. And percentage useful is a determination in the moment with a fairly generous definition of useful.

At the end of the week you’ll have documentation of what your “addiction” really looks like. It will help you determine what the serious problem areas are and where you might give yourself a little grace because you need a break between projects.

If you’re game to try it I’d love to hear about the process, and discuss what you learn and how you’ve tweaked it. Please share your comments below.

*PS My colleague Laura Lawson, of BestEverFitness.com suggests an addition to this process. She’s using the app RescueTime to back up the manual log entries. I’m trying it out myself.