Time for another LinkedIn break

This post was published on December 11, 2025

Yes, it’s that time again: the season to be jolly and time to stop wasting time on LinkedIn for a while. I’ve gone on a couple of, admittedly not very successful, LinkedIn breaks before (see here and here), breaks from which I always returned after a few weeks, in part because old habits are hard to break, but mostly because as an independent consultant, I feel like I need to be visible online in some way, and LinkedIn has always been my platform of choice.

At the moment, though, I’m seriously doubting whether spending so much time on LinkedIn is still worth it for me, and it’s mostly because of AI.

Don’t get me wrong. AI, when used prudently, can be a very valuable tool in test automation, software development as well as in other parts of life. But the amount of AI-generated crap posts, the ridiculous amount of AI-generated comments to those posts and the abundance of AI fanfolks who didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid but who are positively drowning in it have taken most of the value and ‘fun’ (insofar social media can be fun) out of LinkedIn for me.

Sure, I still do have good conversations on the platform occasionally, but that’s mostly in DMs, not in public. I’m pretty sure I can redirect those conversations to email and lose absolutely no value. I will continue publishing posts to let my network know what I’m up to: my public talks, links to new blog posts, as well as interesting Also, my end-of-year slowdown / break is coming up, and I think that’s a great time to spend more time offline rather than scrolling.

So, this is what my LinkedIn ‘schedule’ will look like, at least until after the holidays, but chances are it’ll be for a lot longer than that:

• I’ll briefly check in 2-3 times a week (for about 5 minutes) to accept invites and respond to direct messages, directing conversations to email where necessary
• I’ll schedule one slightly longer LinkedIn session per week (say, 45-60 minutes) to read up on and respond to what I’ve missed (probably not that much…) and to schedule posts for the week to come

Other than that, you won’t see me on LinkedIn too much for a while, something that I’m really, really looking forward to. As before, I’ll be using Freedom to help me stay off.

I’m looking forward to putting my time and attention to much better use: writing long-form blog posts again, reading books that are more intellectually challenging than the entertaining but fairly simple thrillers I read these days, and spending lots and lots of time on my bike in training for an event in 2027 I’ve set my eyes on.

Oh, and given the current job market for freelancers (see here and here), I’ll probably need to spend more time getting my name ‘out there’ in other ways, but that, too, is something that I’m actually looking forward to…

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