Just do it

Generally speaking new technologies from the web are trending and only hot for a while in my perspective. Over time you’ll know what to do with them and how you’re going to put them to your use. The same has happened since Jorg invited me to Twitter, Google Friend connect (soon to be  in the bundled Technology they call Wave) and Friendfeed last year. At first it’s just a big new thing which requires some getting used to and finding out what it’s all about. But more important for me is:

• How do I want to utilize it?
• How can I let it work for me?
• What do I want to achieve by using this technology?

How to utilize
As twitter, friendfeed and Google friend connect – and many of the other technologies – feature a user interface, they also open up their API for programmers to create interfaces to optimize the way you can work with these technologies. For me this was my first journey into utilizing the technologies for me. Over time I’ve found a few clients to use within iGoogle, Windows Mobile phone and desktop. The ones I go by at the moment, which optimize my usage for the technologies are: Twittergadget for iGoogle, Twikini for Windows Mobile and Twhirl for desktop.

As I’m almost getting my Android phone, I’ll be swapping the twikini – which now costs money to use – for twidroid.

How do I get it to work for me
The people who are also using the new technologies, form a great stream of interesting and non-interesting topics and items. I described in an earlier post, that it’s important to filter these streams into a custom stream which I find interesting. This is also how I let Twitter work for me. I handpick every user I follow and see if they post interesting tweets before adding them. When somebody is tweeting a tat bit too much to my liking I’ll most probably remove them from my list, as they’re cluttering the overall customized stream of things I do want to know about.

I’d like to see Google’s Friend connect more like a community builder, through which people can stay in touch, comment on and generally a central communication method. I setup the connect bar and widget’s up for people to join my site and leave their thoughts through that system.

Friendfeed on the other hand is a tool, which you can utilize in many different ways. It could be that I’d use it to search for the latest technologies people are talking about, or I’d like to find other people in the same area and follow their topics in friendfeed. On the other end, I’d rather have it working  for me, as my time is limited and I don’t want to get consumed into the stream of friendfeed posts, likes and comments. the way I let it work for me, is to utilize it as a aggregator of all different items that I find, share, create, write, blog, etc… And put it in  a single place called friendfeed, then it becomes a powerful database of information of which I know I can refer to or call on, when I want to find that one item again. This might not be the way friendfeed wants me to fully use it, but I let it work for me in this way, so it works for me.

What do I want to achieve
Well staying up-to-date in the ever faster changing Internet world is important for me, these technologies make it possible for me to do that. Although I had to find my way with them, there always seems to be someone out there like me who put in the features I like. That way I’m able to fully utilize the technologies and let me operate at my full potential in finding my way around and communicating it with others who are interested in that kind of information as well. If there ain’t a technology for it yet, they always turn up after others have felt the need for it as well. The things you can achieve with todays technologies, were far fetched in the time I started using web-related technologies, but here they are so “Use them” -  Just do it!

I might know a lot about the trades/occupations I’m in or I’ve been in, but when my girlfriend comes home and explains the things she’s seen or experienced at her job (operation nurse), I get mind boggled by the fact that I’m totally of ground when it comes to medical terms. Not that I’m not interested in them, but it’s a study on it’s own to get to know them. So I’ll just accept the fact I’m not knowing this and ask her for a plain English explanation ( to her delight)

Being a consultant, representative or expert, it doesn’t do me any good when I use terminology or technical jargon to bring the formulation of a problem across to whom I’m explaining it to. In my day-to-day work, I’m very keen on using anecdotes or explain problems by use of examples that they can connect/relate so they comprehend. Not to show off my skills, but it’s not their expertise and I should anticipate that.

Although I’m applying this, I still find myself falling back into explaining why stuff is going wrong, totally getting full into detail about i.e. why that DNS server isn’t properly processing it’s requests. In most cases I sense that the person I’m explaining this to puts up a vague expression on their face, but what if I’m not able to sense this… Will this scare of the person to never ask a thing again or will they just knot along… In case of a potential client this would mean a catastrophe on the sales end.

I think this is one of the harder things to any trade, knowing when to talk plain English instead of technical jargon. However the opposite is exactly the same, you could just as easily have a conversation with someone who does know.

My advice would to build up a arsenal of good anecdotes and comparisons for any given situation, which you can use in explaining your day-to-day terminology in plain english.

Tell me your anecdotes in the comments, I’m curious to see which things you use to explain yourself…

gen·u·ine
Two of the descriptions for this word found in a dictionary state:

1. possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real
2. free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere

As it’s quite hard to distinguish yourself from the rest these days and it’s getting harder to stand out of the crowd, it’s likely you get tempted to look into the “10 ways to…” articles that are all over the net. For example; articles that show you how to increase your twitter followers. Really good to see there are ways to get people started into using a service and they should use it. Most of the articles I read tell me that the way I’m currently using services is about 75% the way it’s supposed to be used. But do I really want all those people following me just to follow me because they’re taught to follow and have a huge follow list and so giving me a large follow list, or do I want the people who are interested in what I’m genuinely posting and sharing…

The most important thing about my online presence is that it has to be genuine. This is where I start questioning myself to get into these ways to increase and be heard, because my feeling tells me I’m about to leave my authenticity behind. Maybe it’s a noble cause to hope that people start to notice you because you’re being genuine, but for me it certainly is the way!

Which brings me to the next questions; what will I be sharing? What am I posting about? What are my passions and interests and can they be packed into one blog? It’s time to answer these things by just doing what I feel is right. It’s time to let go of the thinking (just a bit) and start sharing more and not keep myself occupied with thoughts all the time, because living in thoughts doesn’t share my view of things.

Everybody has a busy schedule these days and Todo-lists are very common in my personal approach into a busy schedule. But why is it that putting a thing off feels better then just doing it and get it over with. A term which this behavior also goes by is  procrastination.

On the other hand, when I finally finished that dreaded task that had been postponed for ages, I also feel great about it.

Here are some tips from Leo Babauta on how you can overcome tis behavior. Also check out the Simpleology Blog tips and insights on how to change your approach. Another well known term to fight it is the Getting Things Done a.k.a. GTD approach, which has some nifty tricks to organize your life.

For myself I already tried to keep my blog title as a guide, but reading these tips makes me prioritize those dreaded tasks & todo’s. So; Just do it!

With the growing amount of  people sharing thoughts these days, it’s getting harder to keep up with the information that’s worthwhile your time. On all kinds of different areas bloggers arise, Twitter numbers increase, people subscribe to more and more social sites and overall you’re sent a vast number of updates & digests… resulting in an overflow of information.

My way of interpreting all this information consists of tools and especially people to filter it down to information I want to learn, news I’m interested in and changes I should be aware of. To put things in perspective I’ll share the way I work and the tools I use and after that look into how I’m filtering all this information.

My Interests and how I collect information about them

• News – There are quite a few interests I’m following, these consists of websites featuring regularly content, people that blog on a daily/hourly basis,  company blogs informing about new features, Google blogs informing about there beta’s and many more… Of course I’m not surfing to all these sites to keep up with this information, but instead I make use of a RSS Aggregator (Google Reader in my case).
• Social – Besides the news-information I’m trying to follow, there are the social sites like Friendfeed, Facebook, Hyves, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. I publish my information and keep up with that of others.
• Mail – Then there is the mail like any Internet aware user has one or more accounts for and at work you might have an account.  I’ve set up the multiple online mail accounts to forward the mail to centralize it at Gmail. (I check my work related mail separately as this is done during work time.)

Filtering
The trick comes when I want to filter all the information, not only on a daily basis, but for sure when I’ve been away for a week or more… That’s when I really need to make the filtering count, as Google Reader states a 1000+ messages, Gmail has left the first page and files then next pages with new messages, Friendfeed and Twitter have a history log you don’t even want to start out with, etc…

The only thing I use to accomplish this task is a social solution, through time I’ve found a few people sharing that same interest on different topics. Also these people share and keep up to date through the same tools I use, which makes it really easy for me to see what they’ve shared, liked or commented on.

News & Social
Tools like friendfeed offer a “Best of Day”-feature which let’s you check out the most liked and discussed items by the people you follow. Google Reader let’s you share items with another person and vice versa, that way I check out the topics somebody else has shared and I actually discard the rest of the 1000+ messages in a “skimming through them” kinda way.

Mail
When it comes to mail » Gmail offers labels, filters and multiple Inbox views to organize your different accounts in one mail-tool. Once you’ve tidily customized your Gmail-Inbox,  I’ll be skimming through headlines  deleting uninteresting ones and reading the most important after that. I star them or attach a task to them to reply or follow up and after that I’ll archive the ones I see fit to be archived and dispose of the rest.

Discarding vs. Reading it all
This is just my way of doing it and I actually evolve into using my own methods as well, but I believe this way of working saves a lot of time and if remember one of the sites I follow states: “Do less, Get more done”.

So am I really discarding of information, messages, likes, comments and more? I trust the people that share my interest, by them being genuine and authentic… Yeah – Just do it! If they didn’t think it was interesting, it’s just noise and you’re entitled to filter it out.