Interesting As It Is

The Clutter Of Social Media

Here you are again, reading another blog, settling in for a few seconds to see if what I'm writing is worthy of taking a few more moments to read. It is so easy to tune into the LinkedIn/Facebook/YouTube/Tumblr/Twitter/MySpace/ADDYOURSHERE websphere, and lose hours of your life and time off the clock. Portions of your brain are expanding from the deluge of data that few human beings can maintain or manage. It's become the junkies needle for millions of us, addicted to the flickering lines of information, responses, track backs, status updates, and tumbling text messages. We are now "Friends" with people we barely know, our personal "network" spans the globe, and our conversations are read and shared by people we may never meet. The whole enterprise of social media is a morass at worst, and a remarkable tool to extend the reach of ideas at it's best.

But there is something of our personal vitality that can get sucked into the vacuum of status updates and mindless jujube. While we can undoubtedly gain from the connections and conversations we create in our on-line interactions, it is equally possible to form a kind of false sense of connection and engagement with others.  As piquant as many of these web portals can be, they are essentially a flatland, full of clutter and often so chaotic as to be useless. Try as we might to keep a keen focus, every thing in the social media web-sphere seems to call our attention, and what we don't want to notice sometimes inflicts itself upon our eyes and we are, once again, pulled into the digital undertow.It seems to me we must strike a rational balance in our approach to being social.

First, we have to become aware of the time we spend on these things, for many of us it has become an issue. One idea to acknowledge the value of your time, is to literally give your time, your hours, a specific dollar value, to figure out what you believe your time is worth. Now, start tracking it...all of it. You have 168 hours to measure. There are several apps you can get that will actually track your time, along with the dollar value of whatever time you spent on a specific project. It doesn't take long to figure out that many of us invest more time in social media, and Facebooking, then we get in return. Some of us DO make a ton of money on our web stuff, but for most, it's a black hole of resource and distraction. Is that what you want? If so, then click away. If it's not, seek to balance it by tracking time away from it.

Natural energy is stunted by lack of personal influence and body connections. Reading an update or Twitter, regardless of content, doesn't offer us the important visual cues, the physical posturing and emotional context that can only arrive when we are with another person or group.  We crave presence, and being within arms reach of another fills our senses with information unavailable to us in any other form.

It is important, it seems to me, that we design a balanced approach to social media and friendships. We can, on the one hand, expand our reach using the remarkable tools of technology. On the other, we can balance our resources of energy by scheduling time away from the blips and blops, to spend more time in the presence of others.

• Have a bias towards being with others. Take time to hang out, inefficient as it may seem.
• Schedule your online time. See Social Media as resource, and preserve time away from it as a strategy for balance.
• Clear your cache. Occasionally, clear out the clutter and start over. Toss out the flotsam, and embrace white space whenever possible.
• Start billing your hours to fictiscious companies for your time spent social surfing, and notice how many hours you've burned up and the money and productivity that is forever lost in the clutter of social media.

If dinging around with social media brings you great joy, then by all means continue to enjoy it. After all, if it weren't fun, we'd not do it anyway. But if what you seek is greater connection and productivity, taking some time to figure out and line up your priorities just might leave you with a path to make more of contribution, more money and success, as well as more time to surf when the tide is just right.

The Clutter Of Social Media

Here you are again, reading another blog, settling in for a few seconds to see if what I'm writing is worthy of taking a few more moments to read. It is so easy to tune into the LinkedIn/Facebook/YouTube/Tumblr/Twitter/MySpace/ADDYOURSHERE websphere, and lose hours of your life and time off the clock. Portions of your brain are expanding from the deluge of data that few human beings can maintain or manage. It's become the junkies needle for millions of us, addicted to the flickering lines of information, responses, track backs, status updates, and tumbling text messages. We are now "Friends" with people we barely know, our personal "network" spans the globe, and our conversations are read and shared by people we may never meet. The whole enterprise of social media is a morass at worst, and a remarkable tool to extend the reach of ideas at it's best.

But there is something of our personal vitality that can get sucked into the vacuum of status updates and mindless jujube. While we can undoubtedly gain from the connections and conversations we create in our on-line interactions, it is equally possible to form a kind of false sense of connection and engagement with others.  As piquant as many of these web portals can be, they are essentially a flatland, full of clutter and often so chaotic as to be useless. Try as we might to keep a keen focus, every thing in the social media web-sphere seems to call our attention, and what we don't want to notice sometimes inflicts itself upon our eyes and we are, once again, pulled into the digital undertow.It seems to me we must strike a rational balance in our approach to being social.

First, we have to become aware of the time we spend on these things, for many of us it has become an issue. One idea to acknowledge the value of your time, is to literally give your time, your hours, a specific dollar value, to figure out what you believe your time is worth. Now, start tracking it...all of it. You have 168 hours to measure. There are several apps you can get that will actually track your time, along with the dollar value of whatever time you spent on a specific project. It doesn't take long to figure out that many of us invest more time in social media, and Facebooking, then we get in return. Some of us DO make a ton of money on our web stuff, but for most, it's a black hole of resource and distraction. Is that what you want? If so, then click away. If it's not, seek to balance it by tracking time away from it.

Natural energy is stunted by lack of personal influence and body connections. Reading an update or Twitter, regardless of content, doesn't offer us the important visual cues, the physical posturing and emotional context that can only arrive when we are with another person or group.  We crave presence, and being within arms reach of another fills our senses with information unavailable to us in any other form.

It is important, it seems to me, that we design a balanced approach to social media and friendships. We can, on the one hand, expand our reach using the remarkable tools of technology. On the other, we can balance our resources of energy by scheduling time away from the blips and blops, to spend more time in the presence of others.

• Have a bias towards being with others. Take time to hang out, inefficient as it may seem.
• Schedule your online time. See Social Media as resource, and preserve time away from it as a strategy for balance.
• Clear your cache. Occasionally, clear out the clutter and start over. Toss out the flotsam, and embrace white space whenever possible.
• Start billing your hours to fictiscious companies for your time spent social surfing, and notice how many hours you've burned up and the money and productivity that is forever lost in the clutter of social media.

If dinging around with social media brings you great joy, then by all means continue to enjoy it. After all, if it weren't fun, we'd not do it anyway. But if what you seek is greater connection and productivity, taking some time to figure out and line up your priorities just might leave you with a path to make more contribution, more money and success, as well as more time to surf when the tide is just right.

 

Back soon...

I was in Vegas last week for a catering conference (Catersource 2010) at the Cosmopolitin Hotel, and had a terrific time with everyone. I'm just getting back into the saddle and will resume my writing tomorrow.

Phew...focus!

 

Forever The Optimist

There is a recent study done by some academics at Yale and Duke Universities that underscores the importance of optimism and having an upbeat attitude. This isn't some cliche driven motivational mumbo, delivered by one of the preachers-of-jack-you-up, it's a look at how those with optimism seem to do measureably better in work and in life. You can find the full report here.

This should come as no surprise for those of who have worked with pessimists, doomsayers and other "nattering nabobs of negativism".  But the research is finally comfirming what most of us already knew, that a negative point of view on life depleats the inventory of good energy to go around. That's not exactly how these researchers put it, but it is the point. 

So what to do about the energy vampires that walk amongst us in daylight?  The only thing I can do is affect the change in my own behavior and my own view of things. I have a several friends who believe our world is going to hell in a handbasket and that we are living in deep crap times.  It seems that even if the news is good, there is something lurking underneath, something bad!  When I tell them I don't find the world so horrible, they accuse me of being pollyanna or of putting my head in the sand. They say things like "Well, you have never had it bad...you've never had to struggle.." Laughable..if they only knew.

Look, we need optimistic energy to build new things, to run our companies, to get things done and to get us around the bend. Pessimists will continue to wring their hands and worry over everything. But those of us who thrive on vital, exciting, natural, human energy, have to continue to embrace the idea that tomorrow could be better than today, and if things get dark, eventually the skies will clear. It usually works that way in my experience. When I start to believe that everything is a bummer, oddly, everything becomes a bummer!

Life is amazing, remarkable, beautiful and messy enough. Why not keep yourself surrounded by optimists, the true believers, those that understand the seasons, that the sun will eventually burn through the clouds, and that every day we are alive we have work to do, a world to tend to, people to love, and...at least for me, a dog that needs to go out for a walk. Damn...ain't that just perfect!

Shut Up!

I was just watching some kind of You Tube feed about the mayhem that's happening in Madison, and watched as two people with opposing ideas yelled at one another. As I'm watching, I find myself riveted to the entire scene, not because I know them or I was moved or inspired by either of them, but because of the energy around their exchange.

One thing we can say for certain, all of these riots and protests are containers of messy, reckelss, beautiful energy and passion. What ever your opinion is about the politics of these events, it's clear when we're watching them that the people involved are awake, they're vital and worked up. All of those are good things, great things, even if the circumstances for these events feels troubling. What is at the core of all of this, it seems to me, is that people are deeply engaged, for right or for wrong, in the marketplace of ideas. Ideas matter, and when we feel that an idea we value is being attacked or demeaned, we are inspired to get involved, to stand up and say something.

Our places of work don't usually exhibit the kinds of energy we find at a rally or, certainly, a riot. But it doesn't take a rally or a riot, or a change in policy for us to feel that pull to become involved. What is operating at the core of this is participation in a lively conversation with others we are connected to, where we find agreement and disagreement, inclusing and exclusing. It's when we feel this connection to others who are engaged in a common purpose, that great energy can build great things. Just as quickly, however, this energy can turn ugly and violent, if we decide that our idea is the right one and the rest be damned. Sure, revolutions start this way, but very little will ever rise to the level of revolution. Our energy can build powerful movements, it can change the way business is done, improve conditions, work out a problem, or even build and operate a company. 

When we are dealing with energy, engagement and ideas, the best path to managing the associated anxieties is through conversation. Whether we are working for someone, managing others or any other place where we are in communion with other people, our energies are best managed through personal discourse, shared understanding, and mutual respect. Change isn't sustainable with force, and telling others what to do without input will simply lead to an open loop of disconnect and disharmony

As you watch the events unfold in Madison, or at other places around the world, notice how the conversation changes when people actually start treating each other with respect, when there is a dialogue rather than a monologue. 

I don't think agreement is always a good thing, and disharmony isn't always better than acrimony. But if we are to find solutions that count, that include and improve, whether that is in our work or politics, we're going to have roll up our sleeves and do the hard, heavy lifting, dirty work of listening, talking and building a solution together. At the end of the road, even if we didn't get what we wanted, we have demonstrated some degree of civility, some attempt to understand one another, and those are attributes, I believe,  that put the human into being.

Swallowing The Happy Pill

The world continues its accelerated descent into the abyss of chaos and unrest, the Arab countries are burning with riots, Christchurch, New Zealand is in ruins, gas prices are inching towards $5 a gallon, inflation is on the rise, unions are getting the boot, unemployment remains high and mighty,the economy is still emaciated and Bieber cut his damned hair..oh my.

Things are horrible, people are miserable, the world is coming undone, and no one seems to have a real answer for any of it. But, not surprising, the world of smile merchants and happy dancers is alive and well and ready to paste a patsy smile on your face. If that doesn't work, we can meditate, chant, take drugs, drink and get our chakras open and flowing. If all of that fails, we can spend hours on our knees praying and pleading to whatever deity is listening and hope, of course, that our prayers will receive a response.

At the risk of sounding cynical, I don't think much of these pop culture responses to the world's messy breakup.In face, I don't think the world is breaking up anyway, and for most of the world things are not all bad, or they're not all bad all of the time.  It's not that I don't want to smile or enjoy my life, or that I'm not worried about the general well being of the world around me, but the denial of complexity and the chosen bliss of ignorance doesn't really help with well being at all. Certainly everyone has their own way to respond to crisis and change, but are we truly better off dancing about with smiles on our faces, thinking happy thoughts while the world rumbles under our feet, then we are if we embrace these complexities as an opportunity to connect, as a chance to reach out.

I believe in joy. I believe in being happy. I advocate for the energy that erupts when two or more people share a common connection, idea or goal. But I also have learned that true joy is more elusive when I cover my dark thoughts with gooey sweetness and artificial mumbo. When I accept that life in this nutty world is unstable and chaotic, that darkness and melancholy, failure and misfortune are a seemingly necessary counterbalance to the joy, then I feel grounded to the trembling earth I'm walking on, and happy to do so.

I say embrace joy, embrace a fecund happiness when possible, but accept that no amount of happy thinking or choosing ones attitude can relieve you of the burdens and foibles of being a human being. In fact, connecting and being with others, and giving ourselves over to frienship and companionship might just be the answer to regaining our energy and sense of well being. I might be feeling down today, and worried about the future tomorrow, but I can navigate towards friends who believe in me, engage with those who are vital and circumspect about the slings and arrows flying around me, and I start  to feel better about the moment I'm in. After all, being sad can sometimes be an invitation to be with others even as we're bumming.

If you'd tried the happy dance and you don't have any more room on your "vision board" for pictures of happily ever, try calling a friend to talk, take a walk through a mall where others are engaged in ordinary activities, get together with somone you'd like to know and have a conversation. You don't need to swallow happy pills, or post smile face bumper stickers across your frown; just hang with it, feel it, write about it, share it, walk with it, let it reveal something in yourself, turn to it, get inside it...and then...if you run out of things to do, just sit, calm down and make yourself a nice, hot, cup of tea. All will be well again, I know.

Hmmmm...that sounds good.