My Social Media Productivity Policy

My life is busy, and I’m sure yours is too. I have five children to feed, two books under contract, my entire (two person) business to run, songs to learn and songs to produce, academic and popular level articles to write, podcasts to record and interviews to conduct, exercise programs to design, workouts to do myself, martial arts to practice, plus family time allotted for my wife and children. This forces me to be selective with how I spend my time.

Here is one little policy I have for social media. Always or for the most part (following Aristotle, of course), I never get into social media debates or engage threads. That said, if someone offers an interesting comment that is worth building upon or criticizing, I may use that as material for a podcast or blog post or article elsewhere. At the same time, I don’t want to be perceived as rude or ignoring my followers on various platforms (or critics for that matter), thus occasionally, I’ll find some comment or email that’s worth responding to and make an article or blog around that. This way I’m addressing someone’s concerns and creating content for my platforms – two for one. However, after my response is made, the engagement ceases. My policy is one response and that’s it – not out of disrespect to the person I’m engaging with, but simply as a determined-ahead-of-time ground rule to avoid getting sucked into less productive activities. Success demands prioritization and managing compromise. Social media is often the reason people get few very productive things done. I refuse to allow that to happen to me.

Anyway, just thought I would share this. It’s been helpful to me. Perhaps it’ll be helpful to you (or explain why you don’t see me as much on social media as elsewhere).