The Freq Show

30. Take back your time: Mastering social media boundaries

• Sam Thurmond & Jaclyn Steele Thurmond • Season 1 • Episode 30

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Today, we’re tackling something that a lot of us struggle with—social media. Let’s be honest, how often do you log in for a ‘quick check’ and end up losing 30 minutes or more? We all know the anxiety, the hollow feeling that comes from too much screen time. But what if we could flip that script? Today, Sam and I are talking about how to take control over your relationship with social media and make it a tool that works for you, not against you. We’re going to share a simple, structured plan to keep your social media time intentional, productive, and purposeful in just 20 minutes a day.


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Jaclyn:

All right and welcome to The Freq Show. This is episode number 30, and today we're going to talk about taking back your time and mastering social media boundaries. What do you have to say to this?

Sam:

I think this is a life-changing topic, potentially a life-changing topic for a lot of people. I know it has been for me, so I'm excited to get into it.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, I mean, how many times have you picked up your phone and you think you're just going to look at something really quick like a text message, but then your brain automatically opens Instagram or X or Facebook or pick your poison. And then 20, 30, maybe even more minutes later you find yourself like emerging from a fog, going where did this time just go?

Sam:

Yeah, yeah. I mean we've all fallen into that trap of just doom scrolling and endless scrolling. So I think being intentional and aware of that problem is important, and so having you know some boundaries and guidelines around that is super helpful.

Jaclyn:

Time is not a new renewable resource, and so we need to be wise with it. And while I do believe that social media is a very effective tool, it also is geared to suck us in and therefore waste our time. So let's talk about why social media can be a trap.

Sam:

Yeah, why do you think that social can feel so overwhelming, even though it's supposed to be this fun, helpful thing?

Jaclyn:

Yeah. Well, I think, depending on your interests, it's overwhelming or it's addicting. For me it's a little bit of both. I think algorithms are designed to capture and hold your attention for as long as possible, and especially in this election cycle, my feedback loop is a lot of election details, a lot of stuff about what could happen if or how dire things are in the world, and I'm not denying that there are some very dire, nefarious things happening right now. I think, evolutionarily speaking, we are meant to take on that much information and that much stimulation on a daily basis, especially when we're moving from point A to point B and we pick up our phone. Maybe we need to be doing energy checks before we even pick up our phone and go.

Jaclyn:

Am I in a place where I can accept or take in more stimulation right now?

Jaclyn:

Or would it be better if I just don't open my phone at all? Because for me, I would say I spend an average amount of time on my phone, but it has become something that you know just as a reflex, my brain will automatically open different apps before I even think about whether or not I want to open them, and that, to me, is a red flag. And that is a problem because I want to control my time, I want to control social media. I don't want social media controlling me and when I am walking into a day wanting to have a productive day, if I'm consistently being sucked into social media. Five minutes here, 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, you know that's 35 minutes right there that could be spent moving the needle forward, and there are moments where being on social media moves the needle forward, but that's limited and I think we need to be very clear about what that looks like. As far as moving the needle forward and the, what's the business term? It's not ROI, it's about the, the markers.

Sam:

Well, I don't know, but I like the upside of being on there versus the downside.

Jaclyn:

No, it's when you're tracking something and you want to know if it's working.

Sam:

The efficacy.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, the efficacy. Yeah, basically, you want to make sure that, if you are using social media to move the needle forward, you have boundaries in place.

Sam:

KPIs yes.

Jaclyn:

Thank you KPIs. And what does KPI stand for again?

Sam:

Key performance indicators.

Jaclyn:

Yes.

Jaclyn:

Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sam:

So, but I wanted to say something too. What I found that happens often to me was if I have my checklist of these are the things I want to do today and get accomplished, if I, if, when I was in the habit of picking up my phone and going through all my apps like mindlessly, what I found was, whenever I would get to a task that might take a little more brain power or might seem a little more like it's it's going to take more effort, I would just it was like my brain was like nope, immediately pick up your phone and look at social and like, try to like, I guess basically just distract yourself versus just diving into whatever needed to be done, so that became habitual.

Sam:

You know, if I had a twinge of this is going to be a difficult task. My brain would say go ahead, pick up your phone and just start scrolling on social and looking for something there yeah.

Jaclyn:

So I think we should talk about our personal experience with social media. We talked about how social media can be a trap and how we've both been entrapped by social media, but why don't we talk about what led up to our social media fast? That was now two weeks ago. We took a seven-day social media fast, so why did we do that?

Sam:

I'm trying to remember exactly what led up to it because, we kind of came to the conclusion separately but at the same time.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, at the same time.

Sam:

Yeah, because I told you that I deleted all the social apps off my phone. You know, maybe a day after I did it and you said that you were doing the same, had been doing the same thing, felt foggy and I felt like I just got to the point where I wanted to take everything out of my daily life that was contributing to uh, you know, not having a sense of a pure mind. So one of the biggest things was social media, because so much of it is, especially right now with all the election stuff going on is just such BS. I mean, you go on Twitter or X or whatever, and you see posts that say this about Trump, but then you scroll down a little bit and it says the exact same thing about Kamala. So there's just so much BS out there that fills your mind and is out there with the intention of driving fear, driving anxiety and keeping you searching for those posts that are going to reinforce the perception that you already hold.

Jaclyn:

So for me it was we attract like energies,

Sam:

Yeah

Jaclyn:

And if you're not feeling great, you're going to attract, not great energy.

Sam:

So for me it was just about. I overall feel fine, but in this category in my mind there's just way too much social media and other people's opinions that I'm trying to process.

Jaclyn:

And if you listen to episode 29, which the title of that one is what happens after you achieve a big goal, we both were in this state of okay, what happens next? And there was some fear around that because we had been working toward achieving this goal for so long. Then we achieved it and there was kind of a letdown, and so that, combined with all the stimulation and all the energy that is on social media, for me it just felt like A this doesn't feel good. B I feel like I'm wasting my time and I'm not very clear on how I'm going to move forward. And so I want to reduce the noise and I want to get clear on how I want to feel.

Jaclyn:

And when I turned 38, I decided my word for the year was harmony and my question for the year was is this harmonious with who I am becoming? And spending time mindlessly on social media is not harmonious with who I am becoming. And so doing a seven day fast was so effective, because it's enough time to really get into a new routine, and it was enough time for me to go. I feel very different. Not only have I been infinitely like, truly infinitely more productive during this period of being off of social media, but mentally I feel lighter and clearer and my energy feels better because I don't have all of these constant inputs and my Achilles heel can be health-related fears. So on my feedback loop there's all kinds of information about health, about the toxicity of our environment, about the toxicity of our food, and so keeping that on a constant loop and seeing that multiple times a day also created more fear in my daily interactions, because it was always top of mind and when I removed that I felt much less fear as well.

Sam:

Well, I mean, it makes sense because, all social media, not all social media does at this point but so much of it is all just putting all of the world's problems in your face all the time, and so then you feel like you have this responsibility of well, I got to figure all this stuff out, when that's just. It's ridiculous to even think that you have the capacity to do that and at the end of the day, like you're not really doing anything about it, You're just consuming it over and over and over again. So of course you're going to feel that way.

Jaclyn:

Yeah. And so now you know, our business is marketed on social media. Our app, the Freq app which is out now, is marketed on social media. Much of what we are creating has a very important social media aspect to it. So while maybe in our heart of hearts in a few years we would love to completely get off social media, we are not naive enough to think that it doesn't serve a very powerful purpose. So now the question is how do we move forward with a healthier relationship to social media and actually create boundaries around our relationship with it? And so I actually this is an interesting point I use ChatGPT to help me come up with a plan for how I want to use social media moving forward. And I said I want to engage with people, I want to build relationships, but I want to do it in 20 minutes or less a day. And this is the plan that ChatGPT came up with after I did a couple of tweaks. The first part of the plan is set a clear intention. So before you open the app, ask yourself what do I want to accomplish in this session? I love that.

Jaclyn:

The next thing is break the 20 minutes into segments, so allow time to connect and create and engage, but with purpose. So maybe you take five minutes to craft and post something, then you take five minutes to go in and respond to DMs, then you take five minutes to intentionally scroll and engage with accounts that you really like and feel genuinely engaged with, but that way you have a very clear picture and clear boundaries around how you're going to engage in the purpose of that engagement. Then the next thing that chat GPT and I came up with was to curate your feed ahead of time. So sorry, not curate your feed ahead of time, but curate your feed. So unfollow accounts that don't align with your goals or add value, and I think this is a huge thing too, even though, let's say, for instance, for example, me, even though I love knowing about health and I love knowing about the environment, I tend, like I mentioned, to have fears around health and toxicity, and it can be very overwhelming. So me silencing those accounts or unfollowing them so that that information isn't always constantly in my face and taking up space.

Jaclyn:

And the next thing to do is to actually set a timer for 20 minutes and hold yourself accountable. And then another tip is content pre-planning. So, before you go into Instagram with your lovely intention of how you're going to spend your time, have an idea of what you're going to post, maybe already have the caption written out, or you've already filmed the stories. You know the sequence of how you want to post the stories. You're very clear on what you want to do. So you're not in Instagram just feeling around seeing what's up. You are going in there, you're being purposeful, you're being intentional and you're getting the job done. And then the last part is to stay accountable, set that 20 minute timer, or set that 20 minutes, and then be done, and truly be done for the rest of the day.

Sam:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think putting boundaries around it and breaking it up into a time segment is important and it prevents you from getting sucked in. It's something that you just have to be very intentional about, and I think, if you're intentional about it, this, this is what I want to do, this is the purpose, this is what I want to get out of it, and then, once that that's done, punch. You know you're out of there, you're not wasting time and consuming a bunch of meaningless posts.

Jaclyn:

Well, and I think again, you know, looking at this from an outsider's perspective, you may go, oh, but I want to connect with my friends. I want to be able to do this. I don't like the idea of limiting my social media. I don't look at it as limiting. I look at it as adding to the amount of time I can be productive on the things that I am really passionate about.

Jaclyn:

So in that week of doing a social media fast, I wrote an entire book outline with 10 or 11 chapters and I fleshed it all out. I think I wrote 15 podcast episodes, along with a bunch of other things being the mom of a two-year-old, being the wife of an incredible husband who you know, we do a lot of real estate related things that take up a lot of our time. So I mean, just writing the book outline and 15 podcast episodes is a lot, but that was done within a matter of like two days. So I had three other days of all of this open time to be incredibly productive on the projects that mean so much to me that over the last couple of months have been dragged out because time was wasted on social media or in between tasks I was opening my phone and tuning into social media and getting distracted.

Sam:

Yeah. Well, I think there's a misunderstanding that we have to have social media at this point to be successful. I don't maybe an unpopular take, I don't know that that's necessarily true. I think that there are diminishing, drastically diminishing returns after a certain point that you're utilizing social media. You know here people talk about being contributors versus consumers If your ratio of contributing to consuming is way off and all you're doing is consuming, that's not productive, that's not productive whatsoever. So if once you hit that point, once you look at it as a task of something that you need to do from a business perspective or whatever you're trying to achieve, that's it, Because from that point on it's a diminishing return.

Jaclyn:

Yeah. And I want to be known as a creator, not a consumer in every area of my life.

Jaclyn:

So, implementing the plan and staying consistent is obviously super important, because you can do a seven-day social media fast and feel great and then fall right back into it. So the idea for us is to have that very intentional 20-minute plan and then stick to it, and I would say both of us have been able to do that. I think there may have been one day, maybe two days over the last couple of weeks where I've spent a little bit more time than that, but I would say many of the days I've spent even less time than 20 minutes. So I think we've been doing a really good job of holding ourselves accountable there.

Sam:

Yeah. I don't... Honestly, I feel so much better in general being off social media, so I'm not really. You're much more consistent as far as posting and creating content and everything, and I I don't do a whole lot of that unless you tag me in it and I share it, but uh, I I've just been felt so much better being off it almost completely, that after the first couple of days like it's not even it hasn't really even been hard and I haven't really wanted to go back to it because I recognized the difference in how I was feeling mentally and my clarity and just that, that space.

Jaclyn:

Yeah. And for those of you who maybe don't have a partner that can hold you accountable or whatever, I wanted to provide some resources, and so I did a little bit of research on apps that you can download that will hold you accountable for your usage on social media, and I believe they can hold you accountable for your usage on other apps as well, but screen time is one of them, digital well-being is one, and then, if you want more advanced features or cross-device tracking, which sounds very invasive, freedom and Rescue Time are popular third-party apps that work on multiple platforms. So those are some great resources. If you want another app to be like hey, you've been on this too long, let's get off.

Sam:

Freedom and Rescue time. That's very telling, based on the names of those apps.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, freedom and rescue time. So the key to making social media work for you is to create consistency in setting limits. And then let's do our takeaways. So my bottom line is social media is an awesome tool that can add value to your life, but only if you are in control of social media. Only if you're in control of the tool, by setting boundaries and breaking your time into focused segments and being intentional, you can take back your time, take back your freedom. You can rescue your time and use it for what really matters, which is building the life that you desire on the frequency that you want to live on.

Sam:

Yeah, and I mean, my takeaway is the same thing, so I won't say it again, but I would just encourage you if you've, if you're someone who, admittedly, like me, has spent way too much time doom scrolling and subconsciously picking up your phone and cycling through your apps three times in a row and forgetting which one you just closed out and just opening it right back in.

Jaclyn:

We've all been there.

Sam:

Right back up. You know, take a break, take a couple days, take a few hours, if that's the first step, and just you'll see how big of an impact it has.

Jaclyn:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

All right. So question to leave you with question to ponder how much time are you currently spending on social media and how would your day change if you limited that time to 20 intentional minutes? Try it out and let us know how it goes. Thank you for tuning in. We hope that you live on purpose and live on frequency.

Jaclyn:

Thank you so much for listening to The Freq Show with Sam Thurmond and me, Jaclyn Steele Thurmond. We would love to connect with you via our website, beckonliving. com, and on social media.

Sam:

You can find us on Instagram and TikTok @Beckon Living and you can join our email list to receive uplifting messages, podcast and business updates and discounts on high-frequency products just for our Freqy community. Cheers to high-frequency living!