Photo: Sound of silence by Daniel Gasienica

I did an experiment for 5 days earlier this week, which was to cut out news and other sources of distractions such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and a few similar sites. The surprising things were just how much free time I had and that I didn’t really miss them, maybe Twitter a little bit.

The main thing I realised was just how much time I waste doing nothing, sat waiting for someone to post something to Twitter or Facebook. I have started using them all again over the last couple of days and noticed how my spare time disappeared once again.

From tomorrow I am not going to cut them out, just limit to about an hour a day and generally avoid mainstream news.

I decided to do the little experiment while reading the Timothy Ferriss book “The 4-hour Work Week“, I am still reading the book and for the first time since I was 15 I’ve marked loads of things in a book to re-read, do or go into more detail on. I can’t recommend it enough.