Naturally, I posed the question, “Why?” ( side bar : My Mom says it was my first word and I’ve never stopped using it).
The answer was pretty simple and over the years has proven itself true time and time again. “When something is important enough you will hear it three times from the people within your inner circle of trust.”
Now that doesn’t mean this successful businessman ignored information. Far from it. He just chose better where he would get it. He would go look for specific information that he was interested in. He would reach out to those people he could learn from and then he would implement his knowledge into his work.
His reason? He didn’t have time to be distracted by all the negative and garbage that fills the print and airwaves. He wanted to concentrate on information of value, positive information and information that would improve his clients lives and his own life.
Fast forward to today’s world of increased speed, technology and information. I still find his advice very relevant. Just for fun, I went to my main stream of information on Twitter and clicked on every link posted about social media. In less than two minutes I had opened 27 windows from blogs, news feeds and info graphics.
Imagine the time it would take me to ingest all that information. The time it would take to read all those stories and posts. I’m sorry, but as much as I love reading tech stuff…I don’t have that kind of time.
The other thing I did was looked for negative Tweets in general while I was clicking links. There is a lot of garbage out there. A lot of negative talk and a lot of just, well, mean people.
I don’t miss my main feed because I liken it to the newspaper or television. There is a lot of great information there but you have to get through so much crap to find it. You need do this in your social world as well. You can do this by filtering your stream of information.
- Make lists
- Follow great people
- Subscribe to feeds of information that is of high value to you
- Ignore the negative
- Unfollow constant complainers
- Remove people from your social world that are never positive
- Use RSS feeds to be sent the info you want
- Subscribe to bloggers that inspire or educate you
I know when we see something totally screwed up, we might be inclined to point out the craziness, but is it really worth it? Do we really need to perpetuate the negative when there is so much great stuff available each and every second?
There is so much good variety out there that your social experience can be anything you want it to be. It can be any topic or in any medium.
Its great when people are talking around the water cooler about the screw-ups people make in the social world and you can say, “I didn’t know that, but I saw this great cause that I threw my support behind and I feel great about it.”
Happy Days!
Hi Tim, Great post. The other reason I do not watch the new or read the paper generally is it is old news by the time these mediums get the information.
I generally do a couple of things:
1. I use Google reader to subscribe to other blogs. I start every day off reading and commenting on other people’s work.
2. I use lists on Twitter to streamline information.
3. My number one spot for breaking news is Twitter. It always is because you get real reactions once you filter out the noise.
4. Facebook works well as well depending on the company or organization.
5. For technical information I listen to a number of Podcasts during the week to keep me up to date.
6. I agree with you on a trusted network. I use mine a lot and spend time building it every day.
I actually almost never watch tv any more unless I have a personal interest or is a sporting event.
Thanks so much for sharing your system Rob!