In 2014, Marie Kondo, a Japanese organising expert, made ripples with the simple suggestions in her book ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’. In it, she made the case for organising things in categories or groups and only keeping those which ‘sparked joy’. This bundle of advice collectively became known as the KonMari method. Many followed in her footsteps to clean up their homes and offices, but what if we were to apply the KonMari principles to our social media habits? Here are 5 ways you can KonMari your social media interactions, to ensure they ‘spark joy’-
Group social media apps and move them away from home screen
The best way to avoid clutter, according to the KonMari method, is to tackle cleaning up and storage in groups. When applied to social media apps, this would imply that you group all your social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and TikTok under one folder on your phone and preferably place them away from your home screen to avoid constantly checking them.
Only follow people and accounts that ‘spark joy’
While cleaning up homes, Kondo suggests that you touch things such as clothes to see if they still ‘spark joy’ before you bin them. Make a conscious effort to follow those accounts and people on social media who ‘spark joy’, make you feel good and serve a purpose on your social media feed.
Hit the mute button
While you make a concentrated effort to only follow accounts that spark joy, realistically, sometimes social pressures do interfere with unfollowing and unfriending people. That’s when you can turn to the ‘mute’ button for rescue. Your contacts will never be notified and this way you can easily curate your social media feed to see those that truly ‘spark joy’.
Make an effort to follow friends, not contacts
Social media was built with the intention of being an extension of your real-life social circle, to help you stay connected with them. Try to add friends and family on Facebook and restrict networking contacts to LinkedIn, while ensuring you curate your tone too to be friendly v/s professional, respectively, on these networks.
Turn off notifications
While you’re at it, perhaps the best thing you can do for yourself is to turn off notifications for all your social media accounts and only check them at will. That’s right, only when you want to, not because someone else has commented. This puts you in the driving seat of your social media interactions, rather than being a slave to notifications.
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