Disconnected - My 3 Rs For Early 2008
So, welcome to 2008! While I’ve never been much of a guy to make large-scale promises or resolutions at the dawning of a new year, especially public ones, I’ve always been able to find something I’m willing to toss onto a wall to see if it sticks. Some of my personal hopes and goals for 2008 include local volunteering and folding 1000 paper cranes. I’ll elaborate on both of those as the days and weeks unfold, but I want to take this chance to look at my digital goals in this upcoming year.
If you follow me closely, you’ll know that I turned off my Twitter account at midnight, just after a, highly appropriate, tweet consisting of “</2007> <2008>”. I’ve had a lot of very interesting responses to my doing this, but the most common has, by far, been along the lines of “Are you crazy?!”, “Are you joking!?” or “Is this… forever?”. Watching people react to seeing someone close up shop on Twitter has given me a really neat perspective (And lots of notes) on the Twitter community. I feel I should answer the three questions most asked though - Possibly, not at all, and no, it’s not.
One of my first tasks for the year is to renew my digital world. Over the next days and weeks, I’ll be going through each and every blog, podcast, video podcast, twitter feed and so on that I follow and -evaluating their value to my life. Twitter, as much as I love it, is a non-stop distraction to me, and so I feel it’ll just be a lot easier if I step out of the stream for a while. I still get @ messages, and DMs, and will randomly hop on to read messages, but the “always on” aspect will be turned off, and my tweets will be fewer and further between.
In addition to feeds, I’m also re-evaluating every tool I use, both on the web and on my desktop, to see if there is a better one out there for me. I’ll, quite likely, be the proud owner of a new laptop in the coming weeks, and I want to make certain that the tools I’m using are the ones that will allow me to get the most done, in the least amount of time, while fitting within my existing (and currently evolving) lifestyle.
My personal branding is also being refreshed during this opening portion of the year. I began that with a “mostly done” change of the blog appearance. If you’re picking this up via RSS, stop on by the site to take a look - I’d love to hear what you think. I’ve got time set aside for things like Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter, too… So keep your eyes peeled wherever we’re connected to see how this unfolds.
There are some other things that are being done to help with this process, too. I’m getting a new desk, for example,and re-positioning furniture in the office to help me make the most of physical space, I’m taking a look at some of the personal projects I own or play active roles in and will likely stop or change many of them (even if those changes aren’t visual) and am working my way through a number of personal productivity books in a desperate attempt to make my life more manageable.
So that’s what’s going on - and why I’ve been pretty quiet, recently. It sure seems like things are going to be busy. What about you, though? What do you have planned, digitally, for 2008?
congratulations on your attempt @ digital sanity. I agree with a lot of the points made by you here and also recently by Todd Tyrtle about having our “bits hanging out” for anyone/everyone to scrape. Perhaps inspired to clean up my digital life as well. Good luck, and see you around!
Taking bets on how long he can go twitterless
Tommy, it’s a bold move. I must admit, I understand your desire to reorganize. And, I totally understand what a time-suck Twitter can be. But, I rely on Twitter to not only build my business network, but my social one as well. It truly has become a community for me. We may not have *met* had it not been for that little piece of social media crack. With that said, I’ve missed you and hope to see you around again.