Social OVERLOAD

Do you ever feel like there's no time to be productive, because your entire life is eaten up by social media and networking? That's where I'm at right now. I recently found out about Empire Avenue, and it's such a cool concept that I jumped right into it without thinking about how I was going to allocate time for it. With the release of Google Plus, I started thinking about how much of my day goes into social media, and how ineffective it really is.

When you add up the time spent on twitter, tumblr, facebook, linkedin, empire avenue, google plus, youtube, flickr and the half dozen other social networking sites I frequent, with the time spent blogging here, on tweetsforacure.com and the 2 other concepts that I've got in the works, that's all time that isn't being spent creating. Hell, I'm not even blogging about design! I'm no social media expert, I'm a designer. Social Media shouldn't be consuming this much of my life! So I'm putting my foot down and coming up with a social networking plan that compliments my work, instead of consuming it. Here's how I've decided to manage the myriad sites that demand my attention- by focusing on the sites that create positive interactions.

Social Networks
Twitter: Yeah, I'm probably not changing anything on twitter. It's my baby. I love how fast it moves, and the thousands of potential interactions a day.
Facebook: REALLY funny stuff that I know my IRL friends will appreciate, and lovey dovey stuff about my daughter and the woman I love so that my IRL friends can throw internet eggs at me.
Tumblr and LinkedIn: Buhbye. Don't have time. Don't see the value in the interactions they create.
Empire Avenue: I'm going to use it strictly as a social stock market simulation. I'm going to ignore most of the social aspect until things free up.
Dribbble: is going to get occasional cuts of jobs that I'm super excited about. If there's no benefit in it outside of a designer pat on the back, it'll get the axe.
Forrst: probably my favorite new design related social network.If the community continues to grow, I can see losing all interactions on dribbble and having everything on forrst.
Behance: Is probably useless because of signdesignguy.com
Flickr: is still going to get pictures of all of my completed work.

Blogs

Blogs are kind of a tough thing for me to cut. I like the freedom that comes from purging and untangling my mental spaghetti. I'm going to streamline things so that less time is spent in all the wrong places and creating no interaction.

The elephant NOT in the room:

Google Plus: I was REALLY excited when G+ came out. Now I'm realizing that adding another social network is just not efficient. I'm hoping that thinks work out so that I can replace facebook with G+, but until most of my network makes the switch, I'm sticking with big F.

So potentially I'm looking at cutting out up to 4 social networks. I'm hoping that the quality gained in decreased quantity is worth the effort and missed interactions.What are you doing to manage the social melee? Do you have any tips for me that might help me navigate this huge social world?