Walk with me through a brief history of the way social media took over our lives, and how you can take some of that time and attention back:

Facebook

When Facebook started to get big in 2005, it was still just a way to keep in touch with friends. It didn’t have a News Feed, it didn’t have apps, and hell, it didn’t even have photos! Cut to today, when people are using Facebook as a platform for gaming, for business, and for marketing. There’s only so much time you can spend deleting Farmville invites and looking at pictures of your friends’ babies.

My suggestion? Make Facebook real-life-friends only, and don’t feel bad about hiding particularly spammy friends from your news feed. If you feel you have to use it for business, get a fan page. Search userscripts.org for some of the many ways to hide Facebook ads, sidebars, apps and invitation.

Twitter

Twitter took off amongst the early-adopter set back at SXSW ’07, and officially became an almost-Facebook-sized part of the national consciousness when Oprah talked about it on her show last year. It was initially a way to meet up with friends and talk about what you ate for lunch, but now normal users are following hundreds of people they don’t know and trying to market their web-based crap to strangers.

If Twitter’s become totally unmanageable, you should either make some tough calls about who to delete — nothing personal, but a good friend doesn’t always make a good twitterer. Split work and personal accounts using one of the many Twitter clients that support multiple accounts and groups (Tweetdeck is one of the most popular). Just because you have 1000 followers doesn’t mean you need to make Twitter useless to you by following all of them back.

Google Buzz

Oh, Buzz … it’s so new that nobody really knows what box to put it in. Thankfully, Google turned off the auto-follow feature, so users now have more control over who they’re reading on Buzz, but you could find yourself oversubscribed … especially because people are feeding their other sites into Buzz.

Don’t do that. Let me decide whether I care enough to follow you on Twitter, Flickr, Reader AND Buzz … don’t make Buzz into a spam-tastic catch-all. You may want to have a talk with any friend who’s clogging up your Gmail account by connecting every social site he can think of to his Buzz. You may also want to decide what place Buzz has in your life: is it just another Twitter? Is it Tumblr? Is it Foursquare?

Of course, this is difficult when Google doesn’t seem to know what Buzz’s purpose is, other than getting Google a piece of your precious attention. And, make no mistake, your attention is precious. If someone is trying to take too much of it on a social site, unsubscribe from them. If keeping up with something like Buzz is causing you more stress than enjoyment, turn it off. It doesn’t have to be personal.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.

Photo credit – wolfraven

Basically, shutting myself off from the world can’t force me to get more done. There are plenty of other distractions out there, and I’m going to find them when I don’t feel like working. Sure, I didn’t waste any time reading Twitter this week, but I did watch the entire first season of Torchwood.

My takeaway is that social sites are no worse than any other favorite distraction. It’s okay for them to be part of your life — a big part, even —as long as you manage the amount of time you spend and don’t let them interfere with work.

Here’s my best advice on how to allow work and Facebook to peacefully coexist:

Don’t Go Cold Turkey

I can’t recommend completely quitting your social networks as a way to increase your productivity. If you’re a compulsive Facebook checker, thinking about loading up your News Feed can be just as distracting as actually doing it. Allow yourself a few checks a day — at lunch breaks or logical stopping points in your work — so you can put it out of your mind and get things done.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The best thing I did for myself while taking a break from social networks was to hide all the bookmarks and apps that connected me to them. This seems obvious, but I didn’t fully understand how important it was until I put it into practice: when the distraction wasn’t right in front of me, I wasn’t tempted to go look for it. Even an extra step as small as having to type “Facebook” into my browser’s address bar was enough to make me stop and decide whether that’s how I wanted to spend my time.

Don’t Check First Thing in the Morning

A lot of people have a policy of not checking email right when they wake up, and the same thing can apply to social networks. Whether you wait an hour, or wait until you’ve done a certain amount of work — for me, writing two blog posts is about right — you shouldn’t go there right away. Like email, social sites give you loads of stuff to respond to. Event invitations, wall posts about friends’ relationship drama and tweets about the coolest new web game are all great ways to kill an hour, and they can all wait until you’ve finished at least SOME work.

Try a Time Tracker

I didn’t take things this far (probably because I’m afraid to find out exactly how much time I spend not doing work) but there are some great tools out there that tell you how long you spend on various websites. RescueTime is a popular choice, but you can also try Slife or  Nebul.us.  These services will give you a stark picture of all the time you spend not working, which ought to motivate you to be more efficient.

Don’t beat yourself up over using the web to procrastinate, just be aware that you’re doing it, and adjust your habits accordingly. Good luck!

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He writes about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also find him on Twitter and at his blog.

Photo Credit — escapetowisconsin

You’ve heard this a million times: the first step is admitting you have a problem. A couple of days ago, I realized that I had some difficult deadlines coming up before the end of the month, and decided I couldn’t afford to devote so much time to social networking. I closed Tweetie and took it out of my dock. I deleted my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr bookmarks. I moved my Twitter and Tumblr iPhone apps to the very last page on my phone. I made a couple of quick announcements so that nobody would take it personally, and I dropped social networking for a week.

It’s been two days so far, and I’ve noticed a definite uptick in my productivity. Without the social bookmarks and apps there to click when I don’t have a plan, I find myself clicking on the dashboards of the blogs I write for, and getting work done instead. In fact, I turned in twice as many words yesterday as I normally do. Was Twitter a bigger drain on my work than I had realized?

I think so, but I also don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. A general lack of focus can manifest itself in a lot of ways, and social sites just happen to be some of the closes distractions at at hand when you work on the web. Getting rid of the option to check them unconsciously was a good step. Much like turning off alerts and badges for incoming email, removing bookmarks and social apps means you have to make a conscious effort to check those sites. Checking 3 or 4 or even 10 times a day might not hurt your productivity, but checking hundreds of times certainly will.

I don’t think the cold-turkey approach to dealing with these sites — which, after all, connect you with friends and work contacts — is the best one, but I’ll try to stick with it until the full week is up. I’ll report back when it’s over to let you know how it went.

Meanwhile, let us know about your experiences with social networking sites and productivity in the comments.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can usually find him on Twitter, but not this week!

Photo Credit — left-hand