Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. – NYTimes.com

Our increasing addiction to the constant stimulus of updates, likes and posts is damaging our ability to concentrate deeply and focus on work that matters.

In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable.

Professional success is hard, but it’s not complicated. The foundation to achievement and fulfillment, almost without exception, requires that you hone a useful craft and then apply it to things that people care about.

the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive.

The idea of purposefully introducing into my life a service designed to fragment my attention is as scary to me as the idea of smoking would be to an endurance athlete, and it should be to you if you’re serious about creating things that matter.

A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter.

Source: Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. – NYTimes.com