The Day I Unfriended 400 People

“Instead of asking, “WHAT should we do to compete?” the questions must be asked, “WHY did we start doing WHAT we’re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today?”                                                                                                                 Simon Sinek – Start with Why

Have you asked yourself the question “who are all of these people on my Facebook feed?” I did that recently. I was scrolling through my feed and I couldn’t tell you whose story I was reading. I couldn’t even tell you where I remember meeting these people. I scrolled for what seemed like an eternity and I may have seen a few people that I knew, but all in all, I didn’t see very many people that I did know.

I tried to justify keeping them on my feed and yet, I couldn’t tell you why. One of the things that I learned from reading Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why was to ask the real question. That got me thinking about the reasons why we have certain people in our lives and it hit me; it fulfills the need to have someone in our lives just for the sake of having them in our lives. 

With that, I began to purge my social media feed. Within an hour, I removed over 400 profiles from my feed. I looked through my list and if I could not remember who they were, they were removed. If I didn’t have a social media conversation with them within a certain period of time, they were removed. If I didn’t talk with them one on one in a period of time, I removed them.

Now, you may be asking, “aren’t you afraid of offending those you unfriended?” Not really. If I haven’t had a conversation with them, they most likely won’t notice anyhow. It is easy to get tied up with the “what ifs” when it comes to social media. It is almost like a prison. We get so tied up with wondering what other people think that we lose who we are in the process.

I unfriended about 400 people at the time of this writing. I also unliked quite a few groups and pages that I was a part of.  I didn’t do it for the people or the groups. I did it for myself. Why? Well, that’s another story for another blog.

What have you done to clear the clutter out of your life?