12th May 2025

Okay, first of all — how is it mid-May already? The first two weeks of May have been really wholesome, and I realise that I’m getting closer to the end of my sabbatical. One of the things I’ve been wanting to do is reflect on the insights I’ve gathered during my time away from social media and set an intention for how I’d like to move forward when I become active there again.

I’ll start by looking back.

I had a few anxieties about this social media sabbatical, which I’d articulated in my original introductory note, and I quote:

Well… I do have a few anxieties, which my Inner Critic ensures are top-of-mind:

What if I get isolated, because I won’t know what my friends & other creatives are upto.

How will I know what events are happening around me, which I might want to attend?

What if I lose the “inherent knack” for communicating online which I have right now & which comes very handy for work when I need it. Will I regain it after a year?

At this 4.5 month mark, here’s what I would like to report back to my past-self:

On getting isolated

Dear past self,

Once we stopped checking social media, we also stopped getting saturated with news and life updates from people (and messaging from brands) who might seem momentarily interesting but really have nothing to do with our lives. This freed up a lot of mental bandwidth to engage with real-life experiences.

We ended up meeting IRL friends much more, and we always had something new to tell them and ask them because we all hadn’t already seen everything online. With long-distance friends, we did more phone calls and video chats to catch up. We replaced the surface-level updates about each other’s lives (which came through IG stories) with in-depth updates over phone calls.

We even made new friends, because we took the initiative to go out and socialise more. (There was so much time saved by not trying to create content.) We spent time with people who visited us in Goa and people we visited in other cities. Very recently, we even attended a virtual celebration for a close college friend’s life milestone.

There are very specific friends (2–3 in total) whose life updates I truly miss. And I think I can still try to be in touch with them more often through phone calls.

On accessing information

Dear past self,

We realised that everyone who has an event to market will talk about it not just on social media but also on WhatsApp and in emailers. Over the last 4.5 months, we’ve attended a ton of fun events — from creative ones to fitness-oriented — and we got to know about ALL of them through friends and WhatsApp communities.

In fact, I almost missed the call-for-speakers for a design conference recently, but they eventually shared it in their emailer a few days before the deadline and I managed to apply with enough time at hand.

All is well on this front too. Better than before, honestly.

On losing my online-communication-knack

II’ll know about this one for sure when I start communicating online again. But what I feel right now is: I’m gaining more clarity on how I’d like to communicate online.

When I consume a lot of content, my brain gets filled with the different formats that different people are using, and I start trying out all of them. And I’m very capable of executing them all — but not consistently and not authentically.

Stepping away from creation and consumption on Instagram has led me to re-evaluate what I really enjoy as a viewer, what I’d like to share, and how I’d like to share it. More on this when I write about “moving forward” in the sections below.

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Apart from addressing these specific anxieties of my past self, there are a few more aspects I can’t help but think about when I reflect on life on/away from social media.

Work Opportunities

For every freelancer, social media is a very important space to market themselves. But it’s not the only space. For my consulting work, I’ve noticed that word-of-mouth recommendations from one creative founder to another are THE MOST effective way to get new leads. Authentic networking at design conferences and collaborations are awesome other routes. So thankfully, my absence from social media did not affect my main source of income at all. If anything, I had more time (which I was no longer spending thinking about and creating content) to actually do client work.

But D2C book sales definitely dropped. And I know that when I launch any new product in the future, I’ll need to market that as well.

Entertainment

Initially, I thought I’d want to stay away from videos altogether. But my brain does get tired after (or sometimes in the middle of) a long day of cerebral work, and I want to decompress — watch something funny or heart-warming. I’ve accepted that a certain amount of entertainment is essential, and I’ve learnt to just enjoy it guilt-free. That’s why I’ve gravitated more towards OTT platforms, long videos on YouTube and, frankly, even YouTube Shorts (especially the snippets from some old faves like Modern Family & Grey’s Anatomy).

The problem with my IG algo is that entertainment gets mixed with work inspo and random trends of the internet. And that’s not calming or enjoyable at all.

But every video on the screen isn’t bad. I’ve started valuing genuinely entertaining content, and I’d like to sit down and watch that without distraction too.

News

I have never been one to read news websites or the newspaper. But I would stay informed about the world because social media would make sure that the news reached me. Earlier, every tragedy from across the world would reach me within hours (or even minutes), and my nervous system would be constantly shot with emotional disturbance.

My new system for getting news is… essentially the old system of the world: the newspaper — online and offline. I even watched Dr. Jaishankar’s videos a few times because of how clearly he articulates concepts. I feel this gives me the right amount of information, and it gives it to me ONCE. I stay informed, and yet I’m not viewing the same disturbing information a hundred times (yes, literally a hundred times) a day.

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As I come closer to the end of my social media sabbatical, I know I’d like to participate again. But I’d like to create a new normal for my relationship with social media. Some thoughts on how I’d like to participate going forward:

Content creation

I’d like to create an easy-to-follow system for my own content creation and sharing — keeping content types and frequencies that really work for me.

Content that works for me:

• Blogs — I like writing and I’d like to keep doing it regularly.
• Long-form videos (only when needed) where I’m not rushing to cover everything in 15–30 seconds to explain certain concepts.
• Focus on educational & helpful content only. Hard pill to swallow, but I now accept that public social media accounts are essentially marketing tools. No matter how personal we make it, we’re all selling something — our image, our product and, in my case, my book. I’d like to acknowledge that, even though it sounds uncool, and be careful about what I’m sharing.
• Formats which can be posted through desktop ideally (and just reshared on stories through the iPad).

Content Sharing

• Use the desktop & iPad to share content. After sharing, keep the device away (hard, but worth trying).
• For announcements, use WhatsApp groups too. I have my own little WhatsApp community full of people who want to know about things. I can share it directly with my contacts, and in groups that I’m a part of.

Consuming content

• OTT platforms, books, and the newspaper are way better sources of entertainment and information because there’s no hooking-short-form-content-that-makes-me-zombie-scroll.
• Keep the apps blocked on my phone.
• Digital spring-cleaning: Unfollow a ton of brands (and some people) who I might have started following out of temporary interest and relevance, and who do not add anything to my virtual experience anymore. But this is honestly the least priority task, because the ideal goal is to NOT view stories and reels at all.

That’s it for now! And that’s enough for now. It’s a fair number of changes to make so that instead of going “back to normal” after my social media sabbatical, I can intentionally step into my “new normal” relationship with the virtual world.

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My social media sabbatical comes many months after I’d published my “Manifesto for Sharing Online” in my book Inspired: The A-Z of Creative Unblocking. This manifesto was detailed out in the chapter on social media and was aimed at reducing the frustration that comes with being a content-creator (no matter how small your audience may be).

You’re welcome to get your author-signed paperback here or read the Kindle here.

Every chapter has a tear-away page with a reminder. This is the one from Chapter S: Social Media, which captures all the points from my Manifesto at a glance. 🙂