Getting hard to keep up with the good stuff on Lifehack.org these days with all the new authors Leon has invited to write with us … great quality there. Read some things as I munched on lunch at my desk today, and these two jumped out at me:
By Bob Walsh: Online communities and you
I can hardly keep track of how many communities ”“ almost all online ”“ I’m actively a part of. Whether it’s online forums, Web 2.0 applications, social networking sites or blogs I frequent often or write; whether it’s venerable online communities like Flickr or the newest kid on the block, Twitter, communities are what the online world is fast becoming about.
And that’s causing a number of problems, with #1 being a productivity problem.
Because in the rush to joyously connect with other people across the net who have the same interests, in the excitement of finding others who value what you value, look at the world as you do, have the same obstacles, concerns and small triumphs as you do, it’s easy to spend more and more of your time connecting and discussing, and less and less time working.
Remember work? That’s the stuff that puts food on the table and that you bring to the table called life. It’s the value you create for others, not the value you consume. Being totally connected nowadays means being totally unproductive.
By Chris Brogan: Right tool Right Job ”“ Social Media
There are plenty of tools out there for lots of aspects of life. Let’s make sure we propose the proper tool (or our take on a good tool) for the right job. From managing our tasks and priorities to determining how best to engage our communities, let’s all start looking around for the right tools.
My first swing at this: Social Media.
Blogs are a Platform: Use blogs to communicate with a community about what interests you. If you’re a corporate blogger, write about the good and the bad about your subjects. If you’re just writing about yourself and your passions, great, but try to make the posts relevent to people outside of yourself. Be real. Be fresh. Communicate in both directions. Enable comments. And write back to those who comment.
Blogs can also be used as a knowledge base, but aren’t *as* good at that function, because that relies on updates, and/or edits to fix the problems.
Both bring up several points we talk about all the time in the Joyful Jubilant Learning Community (such as the right tools to use when there are so many to choose from now), and that I think about often in regard to our Ho‘ohana Community here (such as with giving and getting value, and balancing the time involved ” and that productivity word).
When it comes to web-apps I find that increasingly, I am no longer eager to be an early adopter, letting everyone else do the testing for me, however at the very same time I am getting more and more impatient with this dream I have of being totally web-based with everything I need in my business.
Would love to hear your thoughts on these, and the related thoughts they are likely to create for you, if you have some time to spare a comment or two. — Save this for after work!
Somewhat related (re: right tools), and also on Lifehack.org as the most popular post this month so far, is this article by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits: Firefox OS: Why My Hard Drive & Software are Obsolete.
1981 Diggs and 210 comments to Leo’s article as of this writing! Not alone in this boat out to sea! Leo was accused of being too pro-Google, so he wrote this follow-up: Getting Free of Google’s Grip: The 10 Top Alternatives.