Social Media and the Feel-Good Addiction for Legal Nurse Consultants
We all love social media. For example, I use Facebook to communicate to all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and aspiring CLNC® consultants. I love reading details of your lives and seeing the fun photos you post. One Certified Legal Nurse Consultant told me that what she loves most about Facebook is that she never has to worry about keeping up with her friends’ email addresses – because their Facebook address never changes. If she’s on Facebook, she’s always in touch with them. This is really a radical form of communication and allows connection with more and more people, including attorneys, who are joining Facebook every day.
Something I’ve noticed though – social media can quickly move from a means of communication to an obsession. One can get caught up in all of the things to do there – the games and other ancillary applications. That’s my issue with social media. Clicking your mouse to get points to build a hen house for your farm or sending someone virtual hugs, flowers or groceries seems like a crazy waste of time.
Where we focus is where we yield results, and let’s face it, building a better farm, sending pictures of flowers and answering meaningless quiz questions becomes a feel-good addiction that reaps little more than distraction from vision and purpose. Does “I got a new llama for my herd today” or “I answered a quiz about Pop-Tarts®” really sound better to you than “I got three cases from a new attorney-client today”? The way you unwind is certainly your personal choice, but I prefer to find my relaxation in nature, taking a walk or listening to the clacking of my bamboo while enjoying a glass of wine in my backyard. Relaxation has a beginning and an end but the demands of a “virtual farm” never will.
For successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants living in the real world, those meaningless feel-good addictions are something we avoid. We spend our time growing our legal nurse consulting businesses, not fertilizing our virtual farms. I’ve gone though and blocked just about every “application” I can on Facebook to keep those “requests to bale hay” from cluttering up my wall. I appreciate that someone loves me enough to want to send me a virtual pet – but I’m busy with my legal nurse consulting business and connecting with my family and friends – and I hope you are too.
Social media is a great thing. It’s changing the way we connect and communicate. Just make sure that you’re using it to advance your legal nurse consulting business or to truly connect and communicate with your “friends.”
3 thoughts on “Social Media and the Feel-Good Addiction for Legal Nurse Consultants”
I love FB for connecting with friends! But how correct you are about the addiction and distraction. Last summer after my surgery I used FB as a diversion to my imposed bedrest status. It quickly became an addiction. After I was released to return to activity, I found it difficult to pull myself back to reality. But the time spent on a virtual farm and spending virtual money was robbing me of days in my real life. I quit cold turkey. I still keep in touch with friends but limit my access and the time is spent to catch up with the “bunch.”
Hi,
I totally agree! I find FB distracting and time consuming! I also find that people put TMI on the site. One gal was communicating w/ a friend and said she had a wild weekend in Vegas and called in sick on Monday – the attorney read her site and it didn’t go over very well….
Good article. I can relate to ‘mindless facebooking.’ At our house we’ve enlisted the aid of a program that turns our internet access off after 10pm. It makes it so much easier to turn our focus back onto the things in our life that are most important, namely not Facebook.
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I love FB for connecting with friends! But how correct you are about the addiction and distraction. Last summer after my surgery I used FB as a diversion to my imposed bedrest status. It quickly became an addiction. After I was released to return to activity, I found it difficult to pull myself back to reality. But the time spent on a virtual farm and spending virtual money was robbing me of days in my real life. I quit cold turkey. I still keep in touch with friends but limit my access and the time is spent to catch up with the “bunch.”
Hi,
I totally agree! I find FB distracting and time consuming! I also find that people put TMI on the site. One gal was communicating w/ a friend and said she had a wild weekend in Vegas and called in sick on Monday – the attorney read her site and it didn’t go over very well….
Good article. I can relate to ‘mindless facebooking.’ At our house we’ve enlisted the aid of a program that turns our internet access off after 10pm. It makes it so much easier to turn our focus back onto the things in our life that are most important, namely not Facebook.