CDG Interactive Blog

Like many other people whose profession is primarily online, I spend a lot of time, well, online. The amount of information available to me relevant to my field is rich to the point of being overwhelming.

I read -- or skim the headlines of -- over 50 blogs via Google Reader. I'm connected to nearly 1,000 people on Twitter. I check in with Facebook regularly. And then there's LinkedIn, and listservs, and email.

There's so much good stuff out there, I almost feel guilty if I don't somehow look at it all.

It's a regular challenge to keep being informed about my job from preventing me from doing my job.

But I just came back yesterday from a two-week leave in which I did none of the above. Nary a blog post read. Nary a tweet peeped.

And, not too surprisingly, I didn't miss the stuff I missed. Picked right back up with what's new as of now.

It got me thinking, though: what if your only communication for two weeks eliminated all of the external data streams and info chatter and tweets and status updates? A Social Media Detox, that is. (And, as I discovered, I'm not alone.)

• What if you concentrated on emails to clients and prospective new business instead of checking status updates?
• What if you took the time you spent on Twitter every day to sit down with your colleagues and share ideas, or brainstorm, or teach one another something new?
• What if you stopped reading blog posts and instead read a new business book each week -- you know, the one that's sitting on the shelf next to your desk right now?

When you came back, would you be able to balance your online and offline worlds a little better?

What do you think? Have you ever detoxed from social media?