On December 30 last year, I decided to delete my Facebook account. I was regularly deactivating my account and finally decided that I did not need it anymore.

Facebook chat was one of the sources of time-wasting conversations. These conversations took up time, were generally about things I did not really care about, and I did not get a lot out of them. They unfortunately stole time that I could have used for other things. I don’t remember most of them, and when I think back to them they seem pointless. For similar reasons, I also disabled Google chat. While these conversations did not have a drastically negative impact on me, they certainly did not make things any better. In many cases, there were far more important things to do.

It’s very easy to shut out time-wasting conversations online. You can log out, go “invisible,” switch on airplane mode, which I do often. Conversations in-person, on the other hand, are far more difficult to end, in my opinion. I’ve had conversations in the past which have gone places where I didn’t want to go, didn’t interest me at all, and were generally taking place at my expense. Other times the other person is clearly not interested in what I have to say and I’d rather be talking to a wall. That wastes valuable time as well.

I think what I have to do is become a bit more arrogant and say, “I’m in the middle of something that I need to get back to” and end conversations there. There’s a risk of being rude, but I’d rather be rude than waste time that I can’t get back. Of course, the other solution is to not start certain conversations in the first place. I always have things to do, therefore I am always busy. I’m going to not let certain conversations take my valuable time, but rather make time for the ones worthwhile.