Are you “Well Connected?”
How many “Friends do you have?”
Do these “Relationships” fulfill you (personally and/or professionally)?
How many of these “Friends” do you REALLY know?
Of those you really DO know, with whom do you interact with frequency at anything other than a shallow contact?
Where are they?
Facebook?
Twitter?
Skype?
Linkedin?
Branchout?
Listserve?
MySpace?
or any other of the myriad web options out there?
If you were challenged to place a real life VALUE on each of these connections, what would it be?
I’d venture to say there are many very lonely people out there with thousands of social media connections.
Here’s my litmus test . . . Assuming you are connected to lots of people in a variety of on-line places . . . pay attention to what happens on your next birthday.
How many birthday wishes do you receive from people you barely know at all?
How many of the people you really know well are posting “Happy Birthday” on your wall and moving on without further ado?
Whatever happened to a phone call?
“Hey! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! What are you doing for lunch today? Let’s get a group together and go find some great sushi . . . My treat :-)”
Wanna get a grip on building momentum in your life through these uncertain times?
Consider working on the QUALITY (not the quantity) of your relationships all around you. Sure! Feel free to use social media outlets as a way of communicating and sharing, but only as one of MANY (better) ways . . . (Good) Voice to Voice . . . (Better) Video Calls . . . (Best) Face to face.
I believe we are all building our own personal interpersonal cloud which utilizes all forms of interaction and connection . . . Much of our happiness and success lies in our ability (agility) to create a FLOW of communication that Opens Space for GENUINE CONTACT.
I’m reading “REWORK” by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson with 37Signals (Given me by my wife on Father’s Day) . . . This book is right up my alley.
Seth Godin says: “Ignore this book at your own peril.”
On the surface, it’s a business book . . . The real truth is that it’s about EXACTLY what I am talking about above.
Most folks are so infatuated with VOLUME and QUANTITY and SIZE and POWER and MAKING IT BIG and GETTING RICH QUICKLY that they are doing all the wrong things . . . when all we’ve really gotta do is intentionally stay relatively light on our feet and make DECISIONS about our lives . . . One Decision at a time.
Simple as pie.
I’m only 1/3 of the way through the book . . . When I finish it, I’ll start reading again . . . and so on and so on . . . It’s already validated my approach to building my new real estate firm Pareto Realty and is gradually refining my perspective about life and business.
Give yourself a gift and grab a copy – Enjoy the read . . . no chapter longer than a couple pages 🙂
Just sayin’
Best,
b
I definitely agree with your post here. I’ve basically grown up in the internet/social media age (I’m 22 and just graduated from college), but I find it so annoying. I recently deleted a bunch of people from my facebook who I didn’t know that well or knew that I just wouldn’t ever talk to again, I’d much rather have quality relationships with a few people (plus some people post wayyy too much stuff about themselves, which is always annoying). I’ll have to check this book out!