Once a year, I take a substantial break from Twitter—I put it in a box.
This year I stopped using Twitter the day before Thanksgiving and I intend to keep off of it until the day after Christmas—roughly one month.
I don’t do anything fancy to achieve this digital distance: I log out of my Twitter app on my iPhone and I log out of my Twitter home page on my desktop computer. That’s just enough of a self-imposed firewall to break my heavily engrained Twitter-checking pattern.
(Word of caution: when doing this, make sure you only log out of your Twitter account and don’t accidentally deactivate it. If you deactivate your account, you will lose all of your content!)
Is there a downside to getting off of Twitter for one month? Sure, you will lose a few followers and reduce your day-to-day network reach, but the advantages can be significant. (For example, just being off Twitter for one day, I believe it freed up some creative space in my mind, allowing me to flesh out some new ideas for my broader digital platform for next year—including the Twitter-part of my platform).
Anyway, Happy Twitterless-Holidays!