Get Off Your Computer & Love Your Life

Four weeks ago my wife and I quit Farmville and a bunch of other time eating online activities. During this period, I have rarely touched a computer on the weekend. My free time has instead been spent with my wife and son in the backyard creating a family sanctuary. Looking back, it is amazing what we can accomplish in just one month of weekends.

Here's a pictorial record of the creation of Love Life Gardens in the back yard of our home at the west end of Austin in the Texas Hill Country.


Consider how you spend your free time. If you're connecting more with Tweeps and Facebook friends than your own family, I suggest you step away from the screens and look those you love in eye. Go for a walk, pull some weeds, play a board game... connect with the few people who matter most in your life. I bet they miss you.

Gaming Goes Social: Farmville Thrives on Facebook

Farmville has enjoyed explosive growth since being introduced on Facebook on June 20, 2009. Currently, over 56 million people play the game each month according to an article published last week by USA Today. "For social networks, it's game on" details the killer combination of casual games and social networks. I suggest you read the article, as it offers great insights and statistics.

"An estimated 100 million people are recent devotees of social games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Sorority Life and Bejeweled." the USA Today article explains. These games are easy to play and fun; and they're free for the most part. Yet the industry is generating significant revenue via micro-transactions of game add-ons as well as ad revenue from display banners.

For marketers, this is one more example of how important Facebook is becoming as a means to reach consumers. Marketing on Facebook is fishing where the fish are.

So it's quite apparent that I am not alone in my recent effort to reclaim time in reality that was temporarily lost to social gaming: read "How do we best spend our time?" In fact, a Google search of Farmville addict returns 170,000 results. And results on YouTube are significant as well, with admissions of addiction, Farmville interventions and even an interesting take on what Hitler would do if he found out about the rotten eggplants.

Personally, I'm happy I quit Farmville. The family and I actually planted a real farm this last weekend. Well, we built and installed three above-ground gardens. It was a lot of work and a great family activity. I will share more on my real-world farming adventure soon. Until then... have fun in the digital space, but stay well grounded in the real world.

How best do we spend our time?

We all are challenged by the limited resource of time in our lives. For the last four days, I have been down with the flu sleeping as much as possible. This downtime has led to some re-evaluation of how I spend my time. This thought process actually started a few days earlier, when my wife and I were discussing an article I shared with her about the risks associated with some social media activities.

"Top Facebook Applications Vulnerable to XSS and SQLi: Highlights the risks of trusting third-party apps"
In reference to Farmville and Causes, the top two applications on Facebook, the article states: "Both applications contained cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that could have been exploited to perform a wide range of attacks, from exposing personal information from a user's profile to launching a social networking worm that propagates through clickjacking." Yikes! That is not the kind of exposure I want.

After reading the article, my wife said "Instead of wasting time fake farming, I could be learning to cook amazing things on Rouxbe for the holidays when the family comes to visit." Rouxbe is a beautiful and informative online cooking school to which I purchased a lifetime membership for my wife. Christine's comment brought a smile to my face.

So while I was home sick over the weekend I eliminated about seventy percent of my applications on Facebook, left about forty groups and/or pages, tightened up my privacy settings and cut out almost all Facebook notifications to my email. Then in my personal email account, I unsubscribed to about thirty emails; and cut my inbox down from about 400 to forty emails.

How will I spend all this time saved?
There are some things that I need to do more. Listening, walking, jogging, stretching, reading and writing are among them. So I have committed to do more of these things, in place of some of the mindless online activities I have eliminated.

Yesterday, I went out to the garage and pulled out a box of old books that I would like to read. Since I recently attended the Wizard Academy out in the Texas Hill Country west of Austin, I dusted off a copy of Greek Tragedies. Mythology and storytelling are very important in understanding our world; and can help immensely in making us more compelling communicators.

I must admit that understanding mythology is not one of my strengths, all the more reason to study up. However, I did find the following beautiful and wise.
"Justice so moves that those only learn who suffer; and the future you shall know when it has come; before then, forget it. It is grief too soon given. All will come clear in the next dawn's sunlight."
~Chorus of Argive Elders,
Agamemnon of the trilogy The Oresteia

What are some ways that you would like to change how you spend your time?