Is it Time for a Social Media Sabbatical?

Now, there's a lot of customization here, and you can literally do this however you want. Your social media sabbatical can be planned or spontaneous. It can be for a set period of time or completely open ended. It may involve deleting the app from your phone, tablet, and laptop, or you might just disable your notifications and stop posting. It can be part of a content creation sabbatical, or even a complete digital detox, and you can just take a sabbatical from one of your platforms while continuing to be active, engaged, and involved on the others. You have lots and lots of options, so if you've been thinking about taking a social media sabbatical, if you have heard someone else talk about doing this or you're just curious, let's talk about how it could look and why it might make sense for you to do it.

The social media platform that you might wanna think about taking a sabbatical from is the one that feels demanding, demoralizing, distracting or simply boring, and your energetic bank account and maybe your wallet if you're paying someone else to produce your social media posts for you might just be feeling kind of overdrawn. Something I talk about a lot is mental health for solopreneurs and the continuum that involves your bandwidth, your boundaries, or lack thereof, and burnout. Because all of us has only so much bandwidth, and if we don't have healthy boundaries with ourselves and others, I believe it's just a matter of time before we experience burnout.

And here's the thing, when it comes to a social media sabbatical, you can decide to take one because your social media isn't quote unquote working. But you can also take a sabbatical because it is working, but it's making you miserable. Something I want you to think about in making this decision is why. Why are you thinking about a social media sabbatical? Not because I'd said it was a good idea, not because you wanna do it, because it sounds like something new and different, not because someone else is doing it and you think they're pretty cool and smart, but because it makes sense.

So during this episode, I'm gonna give you a lot of different things to think about so that you can decide, does it make sense? How would it look? How long will it last, and what do I hope to get out of it? I think you do need to be clear about your why. I also strongly recommend that if you do decide to take a social media sabbatical, you treat it as an experiment. Experiments, keep us in more of a mindful space, and that is to say open, curious and non-judgmental. It's your business and you don't have to prove anything to anybody. If you decide to take a social media sabbatical, take one, but I want you to think about what you think about it and how you feel about it ahead of time. Why? Because feelings are fickle, they're just not a reliable indicator of whether something is a good idea.

You may have doubts before, during or after, and you should absolutely expect to get questions from others. Maybe not even the questions you think you're gonna get from the people you think you'll get them from, but you will get questions. Why, because change brings out insecurities, yours and pretty much everyone else's. So I want you to decide how you feel about the fact that you're taking a sabbatical ahead of time, because then you'll be far less susceptible to feeling defensive put on the spot or feeling the need to justify, explain, overexplain, apologize, ask permission, rationalize, or simply second guess yourself.

And if you struggle with rejection sensitivity, are a people pleaser, a conflict avoider, or someone whose mind goes blank anytime someone asks you a why question, then I absolutely want you to think about why you're doing this. Feel confident with your reasons, and also have a couple of good responses memorized. So when someone puts you on the spot and you're about to go, uh uh, actually, why am I doing this? You say, thank you for your question, it's absolutely an experiment, I'm looking forward to see what this sabbatical reveals to me, and I'm happy to share the results with you later. Meeh, they really can't keep poking the bear when you say something like that because it shows that you've thought about it, it's intentional, it's not reactive, and there's really nothing else to say because it's a learning experience.

Okay, here's a few more things that I want you to think about, and you probably didn't think about these things before you started your social media accounts, so this is a really good time to think about 'em how that you're considering a sabbatical. One, what do you think you owe your followers, your connections, your audience, your community, what do you actually think you owe them? Do you think you owe them an explanation? Do you think you need to communicate with them ahead of time that you're planning to take a break? What if you decide you're not gonna come back from the break? What if it's kind of like I'm going on a six weeks maternity leave, and then while I'm out I decided I don't wanna leave my baby with someone else, I'm not coming back.

People do it all the time, but instead of sort of leaving that up to chance, I want you to think about what you believe you owe them. And based on that, you can communicate that you're gonna do it or you can just wait and see if anybody notices and respond to those that do and ask, or you can just kind of treat it like a non-event. Go on with your merry way and when it's over, if you decide to go back, you can talk about it then or not. In terms of knowing how you want to treat the sabbatical, in terms of communicating it to people, I want you to think about how you tend to make other changes in your behavior, your relationships, or your lifestyle.

For example, have you made any changes in your business model? Did you tell people about it or did you just do it? Have you added or deleted a service or a program? Have you pivoted or rebranded or even changed your niche? Have you ended or started a business partnership or content collaboration? How did you address those changes in your business with respect to your followers, connections, audience, and community? You will probably feel like doing this in the same way, but you can also decide you want to do it differently. I just want you to do it with intention. A lot of people are using social media without ever consciously choosing it. They either think, well, everyone else is doing it so I have to do it too, or the coach or guru or program that they enrolled in said you have to be on social media, or they say that all their competitors are on.

So if they're not on, they're gonna look like they're not keeping up. Keeping up is, there's so much I could say about that ultimately, it comes down to fomo and it comes down to fear. Sometimes we can put our finger on it and think, but people are gonna talk. People are gonna think, I'm not doing well. People are gonna think something's wrong. People are gonna think, I'm not keeping up. People are gonna think I'm going outta business, or I have gone outta business. People are gonna think whatever they're gonna think no matter what you do, trust me, and you can decide to just let them. I also know a lot of people who've taken a sabbatical and some of them that don't go back feel like it's an admission of failure.

You know what I think is failure, doing something out of a sense of obligation or because it's a habit. When you are not doing it with intention, choice, or a feeling of reciprocity, meaning you're putting a lot of energy into it, you should be getting something of equal value out of it. So many of us make decisions in our business based on shame, guilt, and the sunk cost fallacy. Just because you've been posting on Instagram five days a week for the last three years doesn't mean you should continue doing so. It comes down to the fact that each of us only has so much energy, so much time, so much money, and we have to make good decisions about how we spend it.

If you decide to do a social media sabbatical, you get to design it however you want, but I want you to think about your goals, like what are my goals for this? What am I going to be exploring during the sabbatical? How do I want to feel when it comes to an end? How much time do I need to be away from social media to reach my goals? Do I wanna step away from all the platforms or just the one that's really making me miserable and crazy, and while I'm away, do I wanna make any changes to the number of platforms that I'm on? Which ones and why I'm choosing them and how often I show up and how I show up. So many of us are looking at the analytics, how many, you know, people are we reaching? How much are we growing? How much in engagement do we have? and that's all important, it really is.

But are you also tracking and measuring your mood, energy, and motivation before, during, and after the periods of time that you're engaging in social media. Because a lot of people are almost having an abusive relationship with their so-called favorite platforms. They don't feel like they're getting much out of the relationship. But they can't imagine ending it either, that sounds awful. No wonder so many people feel like they're on the brink of burnout. Some things to think about about how you might want to structure this are, am I an extrovert or an introvert? Because if you're having to pretend to be an extrovert in your online presence, no wonder you're exhausted, no wonder you wanna break. If you are an extrovert, you might actually be better off talking to people in person instead of dancing around on TikTok.

And is it possible that when you are away from social media or are away from certain platforms, that you are more present, more connected, more creative, more spontaneous, simply, more alive. These are the things that we need to pay attention to the time that you're spending on social media may not actually be the problem. It may be that you're spending too much time behind the screen period. That your amount of time on social media is actually not the problem, it's your total screen time, but you're not gonna figure that out unless you take a break to figure it out. Something else to keep in mind is, if you take a break and you're looking to go back, are you more of an abstainer or more of a moderator?

An abstainer is a person who has to col be cold Turkey if something is not healthy for them, whether that's drugs, alcohol, porn, or social media, it's a just say no kind of deal. Other people can go from posting three times a day, seven days a week, to posting once a week and they don't go into withdrawal. It's a really useful thing to know about yourself because here's the truth. There is no one way. There is no one way in spite of thousands of people who've made millions of dollars propagating this myth, there is simply no one way to reach and teach to identify, connect with, and engage, or to turn strangers into followers, leads, and clients online. There simply is no one way.

There are honestly so many options and so many combinations of options that you honestly don't have to do any of to have a successful business. Do you know how many businesses there are that are totally successful and highly profitable with little to no social media presence? What they do have is a reliable way to be found by the customers or clients they're interested in working with, a marketing strategy that attracts leads, not necessarily a social media marketing strategy. There are others, a sales process that converts leads to customers, and all of these things are sustainable. So it's possible that you could turn your social media sabbatical into a total breakup with social media and not even promise to stay friends and still stay in business. It depends on those other things in your business, which you would actually have more time for if you were not spending all your time on social media.

Now, here's the thing, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm not trying to convince you you need a social media sabbatical or a social media sabbatical's gonna solve all your problems, it won't, but it might be worthwhile. I wanna tell you about three women or part of my social network who have either taken social media sabbaticals reduced the amount of energy and effort that they're focusing on social media and or talking about the importance of focus and intention and not trying to be everywhere. They also talk openly about the challenges of managing your mental health while managing your social media presence, Andrea Jones.

Andrea Jones is the owner of a very successful boutique social media agency where she runs social media for high-end clients. She also teaches small business owners and solopreneurs how to do their own social media, and she mentors people who want to have agencies like hers. Andrea Jones started talking about this dark side of social media long before it was trending and she's absolutely someone who operates in social media with a great deal of integrity. There's a link to her website in the show notes. Meg Casebolt is an SEO consultant, she's also going to be a guest sometime in a few weeks talking about her brand new book, the Social Slowdown. She also has a podcast by the same name that you could start listening to now, even before she's a guest on this podcast.

Now, what's fascinating about this episode, along with everything Nicole Kalil does, is that she recorded and released it after spending nine grand a month for six months and showing up five days a week on social media. She had a highly successful launch of her bestselling book, Validation Is for Parking. You should get it and read every word, but she did social media right. She went all in on social media for her book launch, spent a lot of money, a lot of time, and it was an impeccable campaign and at the end of those six months, you know how she felt about it, F this. So these three women have really interesting perspectives and a tremendous amount of expertise and credibility when it comes to mental health and social media.

So check out everything that I've linked to, because this will also help you know if this is the right decision for you. As for me, I'm going to dial down on the time, energy, effort, and attention that I have been spending on the Meta apps, Instagram and Facebook, and I'm going to invest some of it in LinkedIn and some of it in local networking. I miss meeting people in person and I miss how much easier it is and how much more me it feels to be social without the media. I'm also looking forward to investing some of that freed up time and energy into my relationships, my self-care, and other creative pursuits, and I'm definitely gonna be sharing more on this in the future.

So in closing, I wanna encourage you to look at your relationship with social media. Look at your bandwidth. Look at where you are in your business. Look at where you are on the burnout scale. And then make the right decision for you. If the decision is that you also want to take a social media sabbatical this summer and you don't wanna feel like you're doing it alone, let me know.

There's two links in the show notes, one of them, you can leave a voice message it's a SpeakPipe widget on my website. The other link is you can send me an email, notice how I didn't require you to get on a social media app to let me know, that's intentional. So thanks for staying with me all the way to the end. Be sure you check out the work of Andrea Jones, Meg, Casebolt, and Nicole Kalil, all brilliant women who have really incredible value and wisdom to share with you on determining whether this is something that you would like to do. Either way, thank you for being with me and I'll be back next week with another amazing guest interview. That's all for now.