Personal Management in the year 2010

Every day is more time consuming than the last.  Anytime I get 1 thing done I end up adding 2 things to my to-do list.  Some of the things on that list are vital to living life; most of the things on that list are mindless amusements.  I want to address the latter.

The internet and I have a love / hate relationship.

I love that it contains so much of everything.  Each new piece of content brings it closer to containing our entire collective knowledge.  What is added in one day is far more than any one person could know in a lifetime.

And this is where I start to hate the Internet; I get sucked in by the unknown, trying to see how far down the rabbit hole goes.  It is a searchable mess of everything scattered to the virtual four corners and most of it is pointless.

There are two types of pointless content on the Internet.  The first includes everything you would expect: almost all online games, Facebook Apps, video content…  The second, the pea in my mattress today, is that we are making the same thing over and over again.

That brings me to work.  Our industry is most commonly referred to as ‘Social Media Marketing’.  In this industry and I assume in every industry, people are obsessed with finding ways to not do work.  There are conferences to attend, viral videos to watch, blog posts to write, blog posts to read… and all of this is “work” and it is related to work but it isn’t work.

Here is the problem, especially in our industry: everyone is trying to do too much to prove that they understand the space in which we work.

Let’s take blogging as an example.  There just isn’t time for everyone to blog, everyone to read everyone’s blog posts, everyone to blog about something different… but everyone blogs, and they blog regularly, because this “work” brings in work.

This brings me to moderation.  I prefer to do work and not “work”.  It is what I do best and it makes money so the rewards for my efforts are direct.  “Work” is still needed, it feeds work, but I make sure to control how much time I spend “working” so that I have enough time to work.

Because of this we as a company don’t blog as often as others in our industry.  That is a conscious choice.  Sometimes when we do blog we are simply sharing what someone else wrote or created.  We aren’t doing this because we can’t think of anything unique to share; we are doing this because the Internet’s value is not simply about original content it is also about sharing information worth spreading.

Here is my advice for people who are “working” too much: create less and think before you share.  You don’t need to be glued to your computer and your friends can live without the funniest video you have seen in the past 5 minutes.  Life is short and if we work together we can all enjoy more of it.  Don’t do things because they are expected, do them because they provide you with value.

Before you go running off to go and get your life organized, trim the fat, and make room to once again go outside to smell the flowers watch this video and think about the big picture.

Now turn off your computer before you jump into the rabbit hole and this becomes the song that never ends.