At my old q&a site, Answerbag, I didn’t have the self-control or self-discipline to stay away from that place so I could easily and more efficiently focus on more important, high-priority things. I eventually just asked a community leader to place me in the penalty box for a few weeks. That way, I couldn’t participate on the site at all and for me personally, it was easy to resist the urge to create another account.
Unlike then, it is a lot easier for me to pull away from this site now without that extra assistance, but I understand that sometimes during certain periods in our life, we rely heavily on online communities as being apart of our everyday life, especially once it’s a routine we’ve gotten use to and once we’ve interacted with people that we’ve really grown to like and/or admire.
If balance is what you are trying to achieve, perhaps a break by deleting your account for a week or so would be a good start or work on only limiting yourself to participating here an hour a day or so.
But I think this really all depends on how you feel. Do you feel that the amount of time you spend on here is healthy or unhealthy for you? If you don’t feel it is unhealthy, then don’t worry about it, but perhaps you just need to work on having better time management skills.
I know a lot of people have a stance that spending too much time on the internet is unhealthy, but I think it ultimately depends on what you’re doing online. Communities like these can actually be really healthy and helpful for a lot of people. It all depends on your wants and needs. If this is something you feel you need, then don’t deprive yourself of it – but like I said, maybe focus your attention more on time management. :)