Practical Opacity

NutshellMail brings a summary of your social network updates to your inbox in a single email on your schedule.

I’ve been using this to keep up with Facebook and LinkedIn for about a week now and it is really kind of nice. It gives me just enough info daily without having to log into these services to see what’s going on.

The big key is to stay very clear about what your agreements with yourself are, relative to your engagement with such things as LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, and the like. The opportunity that the various social media offer is the ability to quickly communicate, collaborate, and get feedback from a large and previously inaccessible number of people, with varying degrees of filtering capabilities.

Brilliant take on on of this stuff by David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. 

At best, Twitter is a terrible, attention-fracturing distraction. At worst, it’s a fruitless conduit for otherwise powerful creative energy that trains you to think and act in brief, dissociated pointless installments. So I’m sorry Twitter, but you’re the first to go as part of my recovery plan. Maybe I’ll see you the next time I absolutely need to know the score of the Blue Jay’s game as it’s happening.

I’m not sure that I agree with this. Any of these things are what you make of them. The time that you devote to them is in your control, as is the people and things you choose to follow. I mean, one could theoretically follow nothing but news “tweeters” and have a fairly good grasp of current events. If you are a journalist on in that trade, I imagine such a thing would be pretty useful. 

I hope you get my drift here. Use Twitter. Don’t let it use you.

This is a link to an MP3 post of a few years back by my friend Garrick Van Buren. Garrick is one of the smartest people I have the pleasure of knowing and this short audio is only a glimpse of that fact. In it, he uses a lesson learned in an improv class to communicate a much greater message about timing. Excellent and something I have been thinking deeply about lately.

What you actively spend time on, and (far more difficult) what you choose not to do, who you choose not to spend time with, and who and what you decide to say no to — what you choose, then — is how you mark time. And that is all there is.

I’m actually cross posting this here and at Minimal Mac because it is just that important. Time is the most valuable and finite commodity that any living thing has in this world. Think about it, everything – you, me, people, plants, animals, even the Earth itself – has a limited and set amount of time. Even our solar system is but a minute of time in the history of the universe. The average human lifespan does not even register on the clock. In many ways, time defines life itself. 

Therefore, treat it as the most precious thing in existence, because it is. Don’t squander a single second. Perhaps, even more importantly, don’t waste time regretting the time you do squander. Instead, look to how you are going to use this very moment to do something… Anything. Make a mark. Don’t worry about the next until the next comes along. This moment is far too important.

May put this up on 43f later, but if you’re interested in my something something social media talks (and think Facebook is as terrifying as I do), have a look.

As I have come to expect from Merlin, really great stuff. Makes me wish for an Instapaper for videos. Also, I really have to step up my speaking game.

We sometimes tend to think that focus is the product or result of hard work. “I had a really productive day—I was very focused.” Upon further reflection, however, it is obvious that focus is the engine that pulls the train of productivity, not the caboose. The pursuit of productivity is ultimately first a pursuit of focus.

Interesting, and spot on, observation. One thing I have learned about James in reading his collective works is that he, like I, really believes that words mean things. That our words can influence our way of thinking about things and thus affect our actions.

Also, I can tell you how many times I have considered making the bold move he has:

[I have] removed all “two way” social media applications from my mobile devices. For me this meant deleting the Facebook app altogether, and only using Twitter “notepads” like Birdhouse and Tweetr. With these apps I can “Tweet out,” but cannot read my Twitter streams on the go.

The other day, after spending my usual ten to twelve hours in front of this laptop I decided to restart my machine. I checked my email. I refreshed my Tweetie. I double-checked Facebook. I loaded Google Reader to make sure I was entirely up to date on all the news from Helen Thomas’ Middle East snafu to the number of gallons of crude still bubbling into the Gulf to the latest legal wrangling over Gary Coleman’s will to Sandra Bullock’s backstage reception at the MTV Movie Awards. Finally, after a quick check of my realtime blog stats, I took a deep breath and pressed the restart button.

Within five seconds, I picked up my iPhone and checked my email.

Brilliant piece of writing about how addicted most of us have become to being connected. The whole thing is a fantastically fun read.