The Definitive Guide to Spending Less Time on Facebook

The first thing you must cultivate is a strong disdain for lots of information.  Let's face it, Facebook (FB) has gobs and gobs of information.  Just silently tell yourself that all the information that FB bombards you with is highly undesirable.  Got it?  Now we can move on with the guide.

• Ignore the "Live Feed" option.  Pretend that it's not even there.  If you want a live feed, go to Twitter, the originator of live feeds of people in your network.  The Live Feed will only steer you into trouble so treat it like a bastard stepchild...because it is.

• Look at only your "Home Feed."  FB has an algorithm to try to bring certain things to your attention.  Let FB's algorithm do its thing.  Yes, it kind of sucks at finding interesting things in your network, but so what?  What's the most you'll miss?  A new hiking trip photo album from your roommate in college?

• "Hide" ruthlessly.  If you find there are certain line items that cause you to engage FB more than you want, "Hide it" from your FB feed.  If there's an item on your Home feed that generates even a hint of disgust, you must hide it.  You don't want that negativity clouding your thinking for real work.    

• Reply from your email when you can. FB has integrated the ability for you to reply to comments from your email account.  USE IT!  If you respond from your email, you'll be less tempted by all the other candy dancing around FB.

• Get off other people's schedules.  People tend not to be on FB Friday afternoon through the evening.  The same can be said for Saturday afternoon through the evening.  If you want to get on FB and stalk people, these are the times to do that.  There won't be much ongoing activity to keep you on there very long.  I know what you're thinking though.  "If everybody does this, then won't people be active on FB and make this an ineffective strategy."  Theoretically, yes everybody could read this article and start putting this strategy into practice.  However, the chances of this happening is about the same as getting struck with lightning 10 times...under water.

• Batch process the "FB pulls."  The folks at FB are pretty smart.  They send you numerous emails to engage you in FB (e.g., messages, comments on your wall, comments on your posts), and I refer to them as "FB pulls" because they try to pull you back into FB.  Good thing FB isn't your boss--whew!  You can respond to those FB pulls whenever you damn well please.  Exercise that power!  A corollary of this point, is that if you have no FB pulls, you have no business on FB.     

Hopefully, with the above points as guides, your time can be a little less FB-filled.  Cheers!