This week has been challenging. My co-workers all looked at me like I was crazy when I told them that I was going to be deactivating my Facebook page for a month. Being in the music industry, we rely heavily on the sources of digital media for the latest and greatest updates. What was trending? Who was being tagged in what? Who's upset? Who's engaged? This week I said goodbye to all of that.
The first day was hard, I subconsciously clicked my browser to Facebook probably about 20 times and realized every time..."I can't log-in..." I realized after the deactivation that I hadn't been without a Facebook since I signed up for an account my junior year in high school. It took the rest of the day for me to realize that it was no longer an option to spend time on Facebook....for a month.
After the initial shock of feeling completely disconnected from the digital world, I arrived a point of productivity and a feeling of freedom. There weren't anymore "notification" emails, messages, or photo tag requests arriving. About 6 minutes after the deactivation of my account I received a few "Did you 'unfriend' me on Facebook?" texts from close friends, my mother thought something was wrong with me, several others haven't noticed yet, but I'm sure I'll hear more about it as the process continues.
We're doing a campaign right now within the sales team that is pretty competitive. I got to feeling pretty down earlier this week because I hadn't been able to do as well as I'd hoped. This was the third week of the competition and my partner and I hadn't come in first place either of the previous weeks. Now, without Facebook, I was able to focus, without distraction, on my goals and what I wanted to achieve this week. I became determined to seek victory.
I noticed subtle changes in my work behavior, I finished my goals quicker, I became more thorough in my research, I became aware of more ways to be productive at work. The days went quicker. I also started caring more about my co-workers. I mean, I see these people every day; I spend more time with them than my family or friends at this point in my life. I realized that I probably wasn't being as great of a friend to them as I could have been. So, in the coming weeks, I've decided to invest more into them and their lives and become more of an effective teammate for them.
By the end of the week, tension was rising, my ever-so-subtle co-workers would ask if I'd seen their latest profile pictures on Facebook, or if I'd had any great "friend requests" recently. Something did change though. My teammate and I realized that we had a very good chance of winning the campaign for the week. We worked really hard and by the end of the day Friday, my teammate and I came in first place for the first time during this campaign, allowing us to go home half an hour early; a great start to a 3 day weekend!
I can't give all the credit to my social media purge, but I must say that it helped quite a bit. Next week is the last week of the campaign, and because of our awesome week this past week, we're back in the runnings to potentially win the entire campaign. I work with incredible people that are all awesome at what they do, so I'm just happy that they put up with me and that I can learn from them.
This morning I went to a great church service at Crosspoint here in Nashville. There were several notables in attendance and it was really neat to see them worshiping and being so focused in that moment to be able to surrender everything. The message was about how God called us as Christians to welcome everyone, realize that no one is perfect, and that anything is possible. Definitely an encouraging challenge to carry me into this next week! Stay tuned for more...
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