Hey, jawing with friends on Facebook is fun, and tweeting about Twilight is hip, but maybe you, like me, have realized that sometimes hopping on a social networking site becomes a big time dump.  If you’ve got little going on in your life, more power to you, nursing that latte while you connect and comment the night away.  But if you realize you are long on “to do’s” and short on time, hanging on one of those sites may not be in your best interest.  You may find yourself 2 hours later wondering how you could sit and surf that long, forgetting to take care of the things in “real life” you needed to.  You may, even now, be suffering from “focal fragmentation”.

The Symptoms of Focal Fragmentation

What is “focal fragmentation”? Focal fragmentation is what we experience when we mindlessly monitor our social networking feeds, and randomly ride a range of topic threads that they present.

How do you know if you are suffering from focal fragmentation?

Passive Perusing
Do you often sit on Twitter or Facebook refreshing the browser every 30 seconds, waiting for worthwhile posts to appear?  To me, this is kind of like sitting at a casino slot machine, feeding it quarters and pulling the lever, watching the dials spin over and over, waiting for the big payoff.  In this version of virtual gambling, the valuable you are losing  as you wait for something useful or juicy to read is not money, but time.  You are spending moments of your life here, hitting that “Refresh” button- moments that, in time, you may wish you had given to other interests.

Disparate Data
Do you find yourself chasing rabbits every time you log on to surf a session on social networking sites ?  Yeah, checking out that dancing dog link was pretty cool, discovering a hilarious comment thread for some political tragedy is enjoyable, and discovering a good recipe for turnip meatloaf by “ChefMasterly” is interesting enough, but chances are chasing those topics won’t help you to connect with others, or to get anything accomplished in your “real life”.  With so many online friends throwing so many different topics in front of us as we read our feeds, we are easily pulled off course from remembering to take care of what we ought to with our non-surfing time.  If you are like me, filling my mind with so many irrelevant and competing topics and posts often pulls me away from paying attention to what I need to to make my life more focused and productive- even after I have hopped offline.  Swimming across 20 data streams at a time probably isn’t going to help me better manage or improve my life much, because most all of that data will mean nothing to me once I hop offline- and my mind will just be distracted.

Aimless Attention
Do you find that when you hop online, you don’t know where you are headed- and you just wander from link to link?  Granted, one of the joys of surfing the web is discovery, finding new sites, new bloggers, and new repositories of humor, insight, and instruction which ass value to our lives.  Taking time periodically to sit and surf through friend’s profiles, posts, and comments is satisfying and entertaining.  However, it is easy to forget what we are doing on the web when we just mindlessly ingest and react to other people’s posts.

“Useful” Reasons To Social Network

There are tons of reasons we go online and hang out at our favorite virtual water coolers  There are certain people we meet there that we like talking to.  We like being up to speed and all filled in.  We like roasting (or hearing the roast) of some common characters we know.  We like tuning in.  And, online,  we also like checking out.

But while there are lots of reasons to go hang out online, not all of them are constructive or productive.  Not all of them are enriching.

If you are time-conscious and suffering from focal fragmentation, realize that there are, broadly, three useful reasons for you to social network.

To Broadcast
Hop online to let people you care about, and who care about you (or your business), know what you are up to.

To Connect
Log on to grow your network, and to be a part of other networks (and other lives) that circle around interests (and people) that are important to you in your life.

To Teach and To Learn
Drop in online periodically with the intent to explain, demonstrate, illustrate, direct, or clarify something that is helpful for someone else.  And by the same token, if you need wisdom, insight, instruction or opinion from peers and pros, use your online communities to get guidance and help for dealing with specific issues.

Suggestions to Help Keep Your Social Surfing “Safe”

Realize you have a life to lead that probably shouldn’t be totally lived through websites (unless you are @eamonnbrennan, in which a chunk of living comes through your Twitter posts).  Be intentional in your online activities.  Let vision guide your site visits.  Make posts with purpose.

Before you hop on FB or Twitter:

1. Define your goals for your surf session.
2. Set a time limit if your goal is (or is not) to just hang out.
3. Pre-decide who you are going to check on, and/or what hashed topics you want to visit if you are collecting information.
4. If you are going online to develop some new contacts, be specific about who (or what kind of contacts) you need to make in this session.
5. Schedule your surfing like you would schedule time to watch a favorite TV show: you’ve got one hour to get done what you need to.
6. If you are going online to broadcast about a particular topic, write your status line, tweet, or event posting copy before you actually hop online.
7. Surround your life with purpose and goals. You’ll realize soon enough that spending 8-10 hours a week online will burn through discretionary time in your life pretty quickly.

As with any activity in our lives, we need balance and focus to keep the first things first.   Manage your surf sessions, and you will not only keep virtual reality from fragmenting your life focus, but also from stealing “real life” from you.