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For January 2022, I’m going to try Cal Newport’s No Twitter Challenge:

Do not access Twitter for the month of January. In its place, learn a new non-professional skill or pursue a hobby project for no other reason than inherent enjoyment. When you feel the need to check Twitter, work on this initiative instead.

While I enjoy Twitter, and my feed is free from much of the toxicity for which the platform is famed, I don’t like how it atomises my time and attention. Giving it a break for a month will let me figure out exactly what I want out of the service, and free up some time for other things.

I’m going to make one slight tweak to the rule as stated above; I’m not going to access the Twitter feed during January. I’ll keep notifications on, meaning that I’ll still see any DMs or replies that come in. I don’t anticipate many of these, so it seems like a reasonable compromise to avoid leaving people hanging. I’ll also share links to any posts that I make on this blog, as I suspect that’s the main way people see them now that RSS is a niche pursuit. I don’t think either of these will compromise the spirit of the challenge, but if I find that the first leads me to sneaking a peek at the feed I’ll cut that out as well.

Hopefully a bit of a reset will let me re-approach Twitter in a more considered way; even if it doesn’t, I’ll at least have had a bit more spare time for other things for a few weeks. Wish me luck!