Every Thursday at 8 PM EST, David Spinks and Lauren Fernandez host a Twitter chat called #u30pro. Its focus is to create a network of young (aka “under-30″) professionals, but participants of all ages are invited to join the discussion and share their relevant wisdom.
Last week, the topic involved offices — namely, do we still need them?
With such a web-enabled modern workforce, is there still actual value in requiring people to work in one place for 40+ hours every week?
Making the Case for Tunnel Vision
As many #u30pro participants admitted, working from home exposes a person to daylong distractions (e.g., kids, pets, video games, running errands, taking a nap). Wouldn’t being stuck at the office be more productive by default?
And yet, in an office, you’re still assaulted with distractions of a different stripe: questions, emergencies, small talk, meetings, upgrades, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, memos…
Is there really any difference?
Yes, But It’s All in Your Head
As I tweeted during #u30pro, an “office” is less important than “a place where you can focus and accomplish your goals.”
And, whether you work at home or in an office, that focus is ultimately up to you.
To help reduce the white noise that can distract you from your goals, consider these tips:
1. Shorter Emails, Less Often
Very few emails require immediate replies, and even fewer emails require long replies. Check your email when you start work, after lunch, and before you end your day. Send your replies immediately, but don’t check back in the interim (unless it’s an emergency).
Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, suggests doing even less.
2. “Got It.”
Two little words that can put an end to an otherwise endless chain of emails. It lets the sender know a document or message was received without sparking an elaborate and pointless conversation. (e.g., “I got your message — thanks for such a prompt reply!” ~ “No problem! Glad to know everything worked out.” ~ “Sure did! If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know.” ~ “Please do! Although I’ll be out of the office most of next week.” ~ “In that case, have a great vacation!” etc. etc. etc.)
Stop wasting everybody’s time.
“Got it.”
Onward.
3. Block out your time.
Accomplishing the first 3 items on your to-do list by 10 AM is nice, but if those last 2 items linger because you felt like you had time to kill, you’ll still end up working late.
Instead, try this: list every hour of your workday and assign 2 or 3 to-dos to get done in each hour (or , if a project is large or ongoing, in each block of time).
If you get that hour’s work done in less than an hour, congratulations: you’ve earned a break. (Until next hour.)
Otherwise, even the shortest to-do list can remain undone if you confuse small tasks with the big picture.
4. Schedule “Me” Time, and Defend It Viciously.
If you need a coffee break at 10 and 2, take it.
If you need to surf Twitter between tasks because it helps your mind realign, do it.
And yes, naps are good.
Your work gets done because you’re good at what you do, not because you’re a machine.
5. Close Your Door.
If you have an office, you have the right to close the door. If your coworkers keep interrupting you anyway, you have the right to lock it. And if they keep knocking, you have the right to crawl out the window and work from the cafe down the street.
If you work in a cube, the same rules apply, but you may have to be more visually demonstrative. If you’re not to be disturbed, hang up a sign that says so. Or run police tape across your cube entrance.
And if all else fails, work with your brow furrowed or your tongue sticking out. If you look like you’re working hard, other people are less likely to interrupt you.
6. Ignore Your Phone.
If it’s important, they’ll leave a message that you can check when you have time.
If it’s really important, they’ll call back. (And yes, if the same person is frantically dialing you over and over, that’s a sure sign that something else is about to become more important than whatever you’re currently working on.)
7. Make It Hard to Navigate to Websites Where You Routinely Waste Time.
If you can’t watch one YouTube video without viewing three more, leave your speakers off.
If you can’t tear yourself away from Farmville, don’t bookmark Facebook.
The act of having to turn on your speakers, or to physically type in the address of a website you know you shouldn’t be going to, is a subconscious reminder that you have more important things to do.
8. I’m cutting this list short because you have more important things to do.
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Tags: bullshit, Business, common sense, Freelance, inspiration, perception, privacy, Sociology
The cheaper it is to create something, the easier it is to profit.
That’s common sense. That’s business basics. That’s logic.
So why, at a time when anyone can start a business or create and distribute media from scratch, do we still pursue venture capital and beg advertisers for sponsorships?
Because all of our business fantasies still resemble the sprawling romantic empires of the past, rather than the streamlined and self-sustaining models of the future. We don’t just dream of succeeding; we dream of winning big.
And that means our dreams are hopelessly out of reach unless we know The Right People.
So let’s change that.
First, Let’s Pretend You’ll Never Be Worth Anything
Let’s start with your prized business idea. You know, the one you’ve been nurturing for years… sharing in hushed tones, and only with the people you hope you can trust… paranoid that someone else might steal your genius out from under you and run off with it, making millions.
Now, pretend your idea is worthless.
Pretend no one would ever invest a dollar to help you get that company off the ground.
Pretend your entire business plan boils down to “I told you so.”
No investors. No angels. No grants.
Would you still do it?
Could you still do it?
(Would you want to?)
Artists: You Too.
Forget ads.
You don’t lay awake at night inventing stories in your head just so someone else can use them to sell laundry detergent. You create stories because that’s what you do.
But you also have to eat.
Traditionally, that means sacrificing “objectionable” aspects of your creation (aka, “I don’t get it…”) so that a complete stranger will consider sponsoring it. (“You have an amazing idea? Great. But can it sell cat food?”)
Fortunately, you now have choices. You just have to be willing to work for yourself.
So if you’d rather spend your time creating instead of begging, here are five ways to fix (and fund) your own projects.
1. You Want to Fund an Iceberg? Monetize the Tip.
An iceberg is massive, but ships only see (and react to) the tiny portion that breaks the surface. Instead of trying to mobilize the whole thing, just focus on the leading edge.
What single portion of your epic idea can you produce, promote and distribute right now? Which element could force people to sit up and take notice, whether it was connected to a larger system or not?
Find a way to isolate and profitably market the leading edge of your idea and the vast mechanism behind it will eventually come into view. But if you try to create it all at once, you’ll be overwhelmed, and you’ll never build up enough momentum to break the surface.
2. Think Small(er).
Sure, you can see yourself running a thousand person company. But how many people do you need to get your idea off the ground?
Yes, you could direct an amazing film with a cast of hundreds. But how few characters does your story need to still be told clearly?
Too many pieces and the picture falls apart; too few and the idea can’t support itself.
Find the absolute bare minimum of resources you need to make something compelling. Once you’ve done that, you can build out, which feels like success. But starting big and scaling back feels like failure. Better to cast yourself as the underdog than the target.
3. Crowdfund It.
Investors can provide you with significant funds and resources, but investors also expect to earn their money back, plus a profit. When you take their money, the clock is ticking. You’re judged at every step.
So why not get judged once, in advance, and earn small wagers with no strings attached?
That’s where crowdfunding services like Kickstarter and IndieGogo come in. They let your audience donate to your project in advance. This not only provides you with starting capital, but also a clearer idea of how interested the public is in your work. (Did you expect to raise $10,000 for a project, but you only raised $2,000? There’s a lesson there.)
4. Let Your Audience Be Your Accountants.
You make products to benefit the customer. You create art to entertain the audience.
So trust them with your ledger.
To crowdfund wisely, make your financial goals crystal clear: “I need X dollars to complete Project Z.” Sympathetic audiences will respond, not just because they’re interested in the project, but because they can see just how close (or far) you are to your budgetary goals.
When your audience understands the direct impact their contribution will have on your bottom line, they’ll be more likely to invest in your plan — partially because you have a plan, and you aren’t afraid to share it.
And if you run into trouble, maybe they can help. Because you’re all in it together.
5. Make Your Own Merchandise.
If you’re an artist, you probably dream of seeing your work taken seriously. But you may also dream of seeing your work on TV screens and billboards, or on someone’s t-shirt, backpack or refrigerator magnet. (There’s no shame in ancillaries.)
If one of your goals is to create work that becomes so iconic in the minds of its audience that they’ll voluntarily pay to wear / share / promote it, do them (and you) a favor: make it easy for them.
Characters. Quotes. Games. Jokes. Puzzles. Apparel. Toys. Replicas. The list goes on. And no matter how obscure your project may seem, there’s a hook in there somewhere that fans could use as a visual calling card to identify themselves.
For example, you’ve probably seen a Hatchet Man car decal and never known what it meant. Or a Homestar Runner laptop skin, a Diesel Sweeties in-joke t-shirt or an Achewood shotglass, which are some of the creative ways the Brothers Chaps, Richard Stevens and Chris Onstad have been self-funding their respective web media for years.
So instead of trying to shoehorn your ideas into someone else’s ad spend, focus on selling your work your way. License your creations. Produce your own merchandise. Provide tangible goods that your audience can choose to purchase, thereby helping you continue to create the work they already enjoy.
One Last Kick in the Ass
In the history of humanity, we’ve never had this kind of universal access to knowledge, resources, communication, distribution and technology.
If you have an idea, you can start a company.
If you have a story, you can change the world.
Go ahead. Dream big.
But it all has to start somewhere.
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Tags: art, audience, Business, common sense, Freelance, inspiration, money, movies, music, networking, perception, Social Media, Sociology
Last year, I blogged my own 2 cents about How to Run a Successful Coffee Shop, based on my experiences as a regular patron thereof. (As a freelancer, I spend most days working via laptop at one of many local cafes.)
That post continues to drive traffic to my blog even today — presumably from aspiring coffee shop owners who are trying to boost business and increase sales. Realizing this, I thought I’d follow up by getting some extra advice from people who actually run cafes for a living.
Thanks to some folks on Twitter (who suggested their own favorite cafes), plus the advice of the owners and baristas at several cafes I personally frequent, here are some business tips from actual cafe owners. (Note: Each respondent was asked the same 3 questions, for the sake of simplicity.)
What do you wish someone had told you before you opened your current cafe?
“Have more cash in the beginning. It takes time to build your customer base.”
– Bob Fish, CEO and co-founder of BIGGBY Coffee / @biggbybob / Biggby on Facebook
“I knew this, but thought I could ‘beat’ it: don’t get in bed with your contractor. Or, like I did, let my lover lead the project. What a disaster.”
– Bee, owner of Beezy’s Cafe (Ypsilanti, MI) / Beezy’s on Facebook
“We wish we’d known that to succeed in providing top quality coffee, we would need to locate in an area with an open mind towards food in general (e.g. The Strip District). In our location, we need to serve the stupid drinks and have a lot of options for kids. We spend a ton on training in coffee, but all that knowledge is useful to maybe only 10-15% of our customers. The other 85% want dessert drinks.”
– Rich Westerfield, owner of Aldo Coffee (Pittsburgh, PA) / @aldocoffee / Aldo on Facebook
“We have gotten to the point where we have more structure within the cafe by implementing policies and making sure everyone adheres to them. However, I wish someone had told us that is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for smooth transition during growth.”
– Sunni Gilliam, owner of Teavolve (Baltimore, MD) / @teavolve / Teavolve on Facebook
“I wish someone had warned me that the business would consume my life because I care about it so much. I need to remember to make more time for family / friends.”
– Jessica Obst, owner, Cafe Latte’da (Baltimore, MD) / @lattedafells / Latte’da on Facebook
“In a small, independent coffee shop, the regulars feel a sense of ownership — maybe more so than the staff. It’s important to respect that this place was ‘theirs’ before you got there and it will still be theirs when you leave.”
– Ashlene, barista, Cafe Latte’da (Baltimore, MD) / @lattedafells / Latte’da on Facebook
“I wish someone had encouraged me to make sure absolutely everything was organized before I got started. Shopping lists, a system to pay bills and record other expenses, where/how to file past reports, etc. Now that I’ve been half-assing it for the last 4 years, trying to tackle the problem of organization is extremely overwhelming.”
– Victoria Dilliott, owner of Affogato (Pittsburgh, PA) / @affogato / Affogato on Facebook
Marketing, service or quality: which do you feel is the key to a profitable cafe?
“You cannot separate these into “the key”; small business means that you will wear many hats. In my old restaurant days we used to say I am the chief, cook, and bottle washer. This is why many turn to a franchise (which typically has templated marketing and quality, so that you can work on execution of service).”
– Bob Fish, CEO and co-founder of BIGGBY Coffee / @biggbybob / Biggby on Facebook
“They’re not mutually exclusive by any means. They have to work synergistically. My staff giving great service is part of marketing, which is part of quality, which is all service. The key for us is being able to define parts that matter most and really broadcasting it.”
– Bee, owner of Beezy’s Cafe (Ypsilanti, MI) / Beezy’s on Facebook
“Coffee is pretty much a three block business. People won’t walk farther than that. So you’re either part of that neighborhood scene or you’re a destination people will drive to because of something unique that has little to do with ambience. Usually it’s coffee, but could be pastries or food. It’s not couches or wireless.
As far as marketing goes, word of mouth is still king. This is a business where you’re lucky to have an average sale as high as $4.00. To buy a $250 ad means you’d need to sell $750-$1000 in goods for it to be worthwhile. That’s 175-250 cups of coffee. And that doesn’t happen from an ad. If we were to buy ads, they’d absolutely be for catering. That’s where the highest profit margins are. And we’re the best at it in the city.
Other than some laptop warriors and a handful of certified coffee geeks, nobody really pays attention to Twitter or Facebook sites for coffeeshops. Of the 1180 Twitter followers we have, maybe 25 are regular customers. Half are from other coffeeshops around the world.”
– Rich Westerfield, owner of Aldo Coffee (Pittsburgh, PA) / @aldocoffee / Aldo on Facebook
“Each element is essential to a profitable cafe. However, if I must choose just one, it would be service. The marketing will come through positive word of mouth. This isn’t to say that the quality of the product can be poor, but it doesn’t have to be ‘mind blowing.’ With the economy right now, customers want to know that they are being appreciated for choosing your cafe to spend their time and especially their money.”
– Sunni Gilliam, co-owner of Teavolve (Baltimore, MD) / @teavolve / Teavolve on Facebook
“I don’t think I can separate quality product and excellent customer service. My business depends on word of mouth and the cafe’s reputation in the neighborhood. To maintain that reputation, I need to make sure I’m consistently making a quality product, and that the coffee shop staff are friendly to my customers.”
– Jessica Obst, owner, Cafe Latte’da (Baltimore, MD) / @lattedafells / Latte’da on Facebook
“As a barista, I like to think that I deliver the kind of service that keeps people coming back to the store, and that I make a pretty good cappuccino; but I know that without Jessica’s awesome homemade treats we would not be so highly regarded.”
– Ashlene, barista, Cafe Latte’da (Baltimore, MD) / @lattedafells / Latte’da on Facebook
“I think service is the most important, but seconded VERY closely by quality. Without a good product, people won’t come back, but the first impressions from customer service employees have an even more immediate effect.”
– Victoria Dilliott, owner of Affogato (Pittsburgh, PA) / @affogato / Affogato on Facebook
What’s one recent mistake you made that you’d like to help others avoid?
“A mistake that I think many café owners make is to try and follow or emulate the market leader. I don’t think it is wise to try to chase them; rather it’s more important to develop your own identity.”
– Bob Fish, CEO and co-founder of BIGGBY Coffee / @biggbybob / Biggby on Facebook
“Keeping underperformers. Just don’t do it.”
– Bee, owner of Beezy’s Cafe (Ypsilanti, MI) / Beezy’s on Facebook
“The biggest mistake we’ve made in the past year was taking on some staff who were solid employees (good cleaners, showed up on time, etc.) but lousy baristas. We lost customers due to poor drink quality. And we lost them to a café up the street that totally sucks, but the perception is that we’re “the expensive guys”, so a bad drink here is unforgivable.”
– Rich Westerfield, owner of Aldo Coffee (Pittsburgh, PA) / @aldocoffee / Aldo on Facebook
“Always have reserve funds for the ‘rainy days.’ When we had 2 major snowstorms this past season, it affected the entire service industry. Many restaurants were forced to shut their doors or cut the staff. We were not prepared to lose thousands of dollars in sales during Christmas weekend, nor were we prepared to lose thousands of dollars in food. (We had several holiday parties booked and ordered accordingly.) We were fortunate to be able to weather the storm; however, we still are not where we need to be financially. ”
– Sunni Gilliam, co-owner of Teavolve (Baltimore, MD) / @teavolve / Teavolve on Facebook
“I am there to meet the needs of the neighborhood and I need to take criticism without feeling hurt. It’s hard not to take criticism personally when the business is my ‘baby,’ but I am trying to listen to all suggestions now with an open mind.”
– Jessica Obst, owner, Cafe Latte’da (Baltimore, MD) / @lattedafells / Latte’da on Facebook
“Same as Jess: trying to not take things personally if someone doesn’t like the way I make something. The beauty of working here instead of Starbucks is, there is no manual saying that every product is made the exact same way. As long as we have the ingredients and I’m confident I can make it the way the customer wants, I’ll try my best to make it happen.”
– Ashlene, barista, Cafe Latte’da (Baltimore, MD) / @lattedafells / Latte’da on Facebook
“Do NOT keep employees on just because they’ve been there for a long time. If there’s any lack of respect to the manager or establishment, it only fosters bad blood and shows itself in the quality of service, too.”
– Victoria Dilliott, owner of Affogato (Pittsburgh, PA) / @affogato / Affogato on Facebook
Agree? Disagree? Have another tip to share? Leave your own stories in the comments.
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Tags: audience, baltimore, Business, coffee, Freelance, money, Pittsburgh, Sociology
A few months ago, I decided to try an experiment with this blog. From May through July, instead of posting daily, I would only post once per week. That way, rather than scrambling to say something relevant 5 times a week, I could invest my time in one good, solid post.
Here’s what I learned from my venture into minimalism.
1. As predicted, my site traffic dropped off a cliff.
According to Compete, I had:
- 9,900 unique visitors in April
- 11,400 unique visitors in May
- 2,600 unique visitors in June
- July stats not yet available
According to Google Analytics, I had:
- 7,500 page views in April
- 7,491 page views in May
- 3,583 page views in June
- 4,877 page views in July
Finally, my Alexa ranking hovered around 162,000 when this experiment began; it’s currently at 245,546 as I type this.
This overall downward traffic trend is unsurprising, since I was only creating 20% of the content that I usually do. (In fact, if anything, I should be surprised that my page views didn’t drop by a full 80%.)
2. Posting once a week does not guarantee a high-impact read.
I initially thought that posting once a week would result in a heavy amount of traffic to each week’s single post.
I was wrong.
According to bit.ly, here are the number of first-week clicks on my bit.ly link for each blog post during the experiment. (The numbers from my link are listed first, and the total clicks for all bit.ly links to that post are in parentheses.)
- Apr 26 — 220 (1291)
- May 3 — 50 (399)
- May 10 — 72 (155)
- May 17 — 99 (169)
- May 24 — 81 (1671)
- May 31 — 56 (59)
- Jun 7 — 34 (182)
- Jun 14 — 40 (115)
- Jun 21 — 96 (109)
- Jun 28 — 99 (197)
- Jul 5 — 46 (51)
- Jul 12 — 145 (194)
- Jul 19 — 105 (624)
- Jul 26 — 50 (273)
Granted, these numbers don’t reflect RSS subscribers, email subscribers, “walk-in” traffic, etc. But it’s still worth noting that during the entire experiment only 5 posts got more than 200 clicks in their first week.
Now, let’s look a bit closer. Here are the topics of the top 5 posts:
- April 26: The Golden Rule for Conferences
- May 3: Sorry Guys: When It Comes to Your Audience, Size DOES Matter
- May 24: I Tweet, Therefore I Am… Empty?
- July 19: 3 Myths About Social Media Debunked
- July 26: What I Learned by Reading Everything
All 5 discuss social media, and since my audience is primarily social media-driven, the success of those posts makes sense.
Also, at least 3 of the posts were retweeted by Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund and other “influencers” on Twitter — which should make a huge impact. And in these cases, it did.
But even a nod from an influencer doesn’t guarantee a traffic spike. For example, neither my Jun 7 or Jun 28 posts cracked 200 click-throughs, even with lunchtime retweets from Chris Brogan.
In fact…
3. There’s no obvious predictor of success.
Now let’s look at the 3 lowest-performing posts not published on a holiday Monday:
- May 10: The Paradox of Quality
- Jun 14: 5 Reasons NOT to Listen to Your Audience
- Jun 21: The Popularity Paradox: Why Do We Hate Pop Culture?
See the difference?
Me either.
The top 5 posts all discuss social media. So do 2 of the bottom 3.
At least 3 of the top posts are written in a confrontational style. So is one of the bottom posts.
And the ill-circulated pop culture post still generated 28 comments, which is a healthier discussion than some of the top posts engendered.
Evidently, I have not yet figured out the recipe for guaranteed traffic. In fact, the only proven lesson I can extract from the low end of the spectrum is that holiday Mondays are disastrous for blog traffic. (Nether May 31 nor July 5 cracked 60 clicks.)
However, while the cumulative traffic from these 14 posts would add up to a decent 3-week average, it’s a weak 3 month haul, compared to the stats from my daily blogging days.
Again, this makes sense. When you blog 5 times a week, you have 5 opportunities to connect with readers. If you only blog once a week, your post has to be stellar, or else your blog becomes a dead zone for a week.
4. Withdrawal from Daily Blogging Is Survivable.
Although I really do enjoy blogging 5 times a week, and while I did initially experience “daily blog withdrawal” in the first month of the experiment, I quickly adapted to not having to be relevant 5 times a week.
I was also concerned that my drop in blog traffic would somehow hurt my personal brand, but my Twitter followers have risen in the interim (probably because I’m spending more time there), and so has my overall workload.
In fact, I’m busier now than I was when I was blogging 5 days a week — which, I think, may be the actual takeaway here:
Now that I’m blogging less, I actually have time for all the work I should be doing.
5. So… NOW What Do I Do?
Continue blogging weekly?
Resume blogging daily?
Never blog again?
Well…
Actually, I’m trying another experiment.
For the next 2 months, I’ll blog 3 times per week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). My goal during that time will be to learn:
- If I can maintain (or improve upon) my current workflow
- If 2 extra weekly posts will satisfy my creative urges
- If (presumably) increased traffic creates new opportunities, or if my business operates independently of my blog
And, luckily, I only see one holiday Monday on the calendar…
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Tags: audience, Blogging, branding, perception, Social Media
Last week, Ian M. Rountree and I started Read It All Week, a challenge to read everything we were subscribed to — especially all the blogs we so easily subscribe to, but never actually absorb. We did this for two reasons:
- To reconsider why we subscribe to certain kinds of media, and
- To learn how long it would take to actually read everything we’re committed to.
What I Started With
My goal was to read every post published to the 63 blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader.
I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but my guess was around 15 hours.
So, What Happened… and How Long DID It Take?
Here’s how it worked out for me:
- Total # of items read (or, when uninteresting, skimmed) in Google Reader: 560
- Total # of those 560 items that had been shared by others: 235
- Total # of those 560 items I then felt compelled to share: 32
- Total time invested reading items in Google Reader: 496 minutes (or 8+ hours)
In other words, I spent more than one entire workday reading.
About 2/5 of that reading load were items suggested to me by others.
And yet, in that time, I only felt compelled to share 1/18th of what I found.
Sounds like my incoming signal-to-noise ratio is a bit excessive…
What Else Did I Learn?
Well, in no particular order, I came to the following conclusions:
1. I read more deeply when I break my reading time up into smaller sessions.
On days when I made time to check Reader two or three times, I felt more able to really read each post.
On days when I only checked Reader once, I felt more compelled to just get through it. This led to much more skimming and much less sharing, since I’d invested less time emotionally in what I was reading.
On the days when I felt pressed for time, I also found myself resenting longer posts and highly prolific publishers, which seemed like obstacles between me and “done,” rather than the valuable sources of information I recognized them as during my more leisurely reads.
2. Most of the information people share is useless to me.
But it’s not the information you (or I) might suspect.
Initially, I presumed that the social media-specific posts shared by the people I follow on Reader would be enriching. Since I was subscribed to only a dozen social media blogs, I knew I had to be missing something interesting.
Not really.
It turns out most people in the social media field read the same major news sources and share the same information, or variations thereof. Plus, anything relevant or popular from these channels is usually retweeted endlessly throughout the week. (For example, I learned about Flipboard from a shared item in Reader, but I would have also learned about it from any of the 2 dozen tweets I noticed about that same article.)
The other thing I realized? Most social media-related articles are crap. Some are rehashes of things I already know (which, obviously, is not what you already know, and I get that). Others are so niche-specific that I’d never make use of the information. And still others are such common sense sub-101 blather that reading them wastes my time.
So… what information did matter to me?
3. I need to subscribe to more interesting blogs.
Again, “interesting” in this sense means “interesting to me.”
In my case, I’m drawn to posts about art, literature, culture, science and history. These are the areas I want to learn more about, as opposed to social media, a field in which I regularly feel overwhelmed by sameness.
Which means I need to adjust my subscriptions.
4. Consistency is key.
Writing one good blog post is easy; writing good blog posts regularly is rare.
Often, I’ll read one or two good posts by an author and then subscribe to his / her blog. And then, over the ensuing weeks, I’ll realize one or two good posts may be all they have to offer.
If so, I can’t wait around forever for their next great idea. My time is precious, and I’d rather not step through a minefield of oysters in order to find your few buried pearls.
(This also explains why some of the blogs I consider most indispensable — like The Rumpus — are group blogs curated magazine-style from the contributions of many.)
Although writing good blog posts is hard, finding good blog posts to share shouldn’t be.
And yet…
5. I’m confused by people’s motivations when sharing items.
I follow some potentially interesting people on Reader, because I presume they’ll find (and share) articles I won’t. But again, the social media field is crushed by redundancy. For example, I follow Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, C.C. Chapman and Steve Garfield (among others) which means I often see the same information shared several times.
In addition, some people seem to share everything they read, which makes me wonder if they’re confusing the act of sharing with the act of glorifying. It’s as though they can’t separate what they personally consider “useful” or “interesting” from what they feel obliged to help promote because of their relatively impressive reach and influence.
However…
6. You can learn a lot about people from what they share.
Chris Brogan is a social media maven, but what he shares in Google Reader reminds me he’s also deeply interested in theology and spirituality. Mike Sorg is a veteran podcaster, but his shared items are a snapshot of comic books & general geekery. And Mary Hartney is a journalist by trade, but her shared items lean heavily toward art, culture and food.
As such…
7. I learned to share information more consciously.
On one hand, I want to share information I’m personally interested in. And because my aforementioned interests exceed the limits of *just* social media, that means people who follow me on Reader are likely to see a lot of shared information about books, racism, economics and underwater sculpture.
On the other hand, Read It All Week made me highly conscious of the way each shared item encroaches on a reader’s available time. It made me more reluctant to share items, because I didn’t want to sabotage the time & attention of the people who follow me.
Ultimately, I still did share items (because I would have whether it was Read It All Week or not), but fewer than I would have if I hadn’t been thinking about my time and yours.
8. Believe it or not, I actually learned things.
My Reader, like yours, is full of information both great and pointless. The trick, I learned, is to skim past the duds and invest in the quality — and, very often, that quality tends to bottleneck in a few sources.
For example, Atlantic Monthly columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates was on vacation during Read It All Week, so he asked three of his most trusted commenters (Brendan I. Koerner, Hua Hsu and Cynic) to fill in for him. The result was the most compulsively readable blog of the week, covering ground from Shirley Sherrod to LeBron James, what happens when “fringe” cultures are assimilated into America’s mainstream and whether Jack London’s racism should mar his literary genius.
Had I ignored Reader (as I so often do), I would have missed these and dozens of other enlightening and captivating essays (like Kathleen Alcott’s masterpiece from The Rumpus), all because I was “too busy” doing… whatever it is I usually do.
Speaking of which…
9. I did not go broke while reading.
On the contrary, last week was quite fruitful, business-wise. I pitched a potential client, spoke at a live event and conducted a social media workshop, knocked out a guest post for Jim Kukral (peppered with knowledge I gleaned from blogs I rediscovered in Reader), and locked down two more business meetings for next week, all while executing the tasks I’m already contracted to do for my existing clients (and having a real life).
So if I can do all that while spending 8 hours reading blogs — which is only half the time I’d originally expected to invest — what am I usually doing that prevents me from staying up to date on the media I’ve subscribed to?
Probably tweeting. In fact…
10. What did I miss on Twitter?
During those 8 hours I was reading blogs, I kept a Twitter window open so I could chart how many tweets whizzed past me. Turns out I missed over 2200 tweets.
That’s more than 2200 conversations I could have weighed in on, but didn’t.
Would engaging in some of those conversations have left me any better informed, connected or enriched than my time spent reading? Possibly. But I’ll never know.
And I’m okay with that.
What Happens Now?
Now I clean up my feeds. (As opposed to Amber Naslund, who prefers to blow hers apart.)
I’ve already dropped from 63 blog subscriptions to 44 — that’s a 30% reduction. However, most of those were blogs that hadn’t been recently updated. (Imagine if they had…)
I’ll also reconsider how I follow people on Reader. Since 2/5 of my time was expended on their recommendations, I need to ensure that their expertise is worth my time and attention. But the quality and relevance of the items people choose to share is wildly unpredictable, so I can’t judge too quickly.
And, like Bryan Person, I may ultimately subdivide my subscriptions into two camps: what I should read, and what I could read (time permitting).
Because not everything I subscribe to is worth reading, but there are always pearls among the oysters.
The trick is to find them without losing my time… or my mind.
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Tags: audience, Blogging, bullshit, chrisbrogan, common sense, language, perception, personal, Social Media, Sociology, Twitter
