Just do it

Whenever I do go out to a fast food restaurant, I usually order a large milkshake. For some reason I seem to think that I can drink a milkshake as fast as any other beverage, which almost every time leads to a Brainfreeze. At this moment in time I believe such a Brainfreeze should also be able to actually freeze my brain with the current storm that my thoughts produce in the gray matter… How did this storm originate? How am I going to tackle it?

Storm explained

” Storms are created when a center of low pressure develops, with a system of high pressure surrounding it. This combination of opposing forces can create winds and result in the formation of storm clouds.” – Source wikipedia

High pressure system
The past year I have dedicated my evening hours – besides my normal job – to studying and achieving my MCSA and MCSE certifications and with success I might add! Alongside all the learning, there were my other passions which also needed time in these same hours. I created quite the schedule to get all this done and still manage social life on a moderate level.

At the time I achieved both certifications, I felt stronlgy that a period of rest would really be the thing to cope with the dedication for certification of the past time. This is where the opposing forces are starting to work their way into creating a storm.

Low pressure
The past month I have been laying low when it comes to my evening hours. I still spend time to my passions and really find enjoyment in relaxing my mind for a period of time. Until recently the low pressure area was working out fine, but at my current point this area is creating quite a storm in my head. I believe this is due to the opposing forces are forming a storm.

Combination of opposing forces
My mind has been adopting to the high pressure way of learning and dividing my time over the evening hours. This state of elevated concentration of course can only last so long. But the complete removal of the learning element, surely created a drop in pressure and now in it’s turn is creating a storm of thoughts varying from innovative ideas to wanting to learn and spent time in sports more.

Tackling this storm
My way of dealing with situations like these, is to create a new schedule to up the pressure area, currently at it’s low point. I go about doing this by pin pointing each and every thing I want to do with my time and fix a “time spent” to it. Once I’ve marked all the stuff I want to do, ranging from daily grind to specific goals, I pour it into a weekly schedule.

This new schedule isn’t working for me when I’ m being strict to it for 100%, but it serves as a guideline through my week. I should refer to the 80/20-rule for this when saying:

I’m going to use 20% of my energy to get 80% of the schedule done, whereas the last 20% of the schedule will require 80% of my energy to get it done.

Concluding
The tackling measure is purely in place to bring the opposing forces in a balance and not to fully get rid of the storm. As my brainstorm generates ideas, questions the world, processes the daily impressions and fuels my creativity.

One of the questions that an author of multiple disciplines/topics faces is the fact that you would like to attract the right crowd for your writing. At first it would seem logic to create an account for your own name as a brand and aggregate all your news through it. But lately you can spot a trend in how it might be better to not be working top-down, but bottom-up on reaching the your crowd of interested people.

Bottom-up
The way this works is that you want to reach the people interested in your specific disciplines/topics. So you’ll have to start at that level to let those people find your specific website/blog. If people are generally interested in the way you bring the news, they’ll start searching for your name and not the specific brand name. On the website or blog about yourself, you redirect people further to the topics you’re also writing about. In my opinion this way of working attracts the people you do want to have as followers, because they’re genuinely interested in the stuff you write.

Top-down
The reason why I dislike the Top-down way of working, is that people should not be pushed into following all that you do, share, post,etc. Your own stream of news, interests, shared items, posts and other stuff, might look cluttered to people who are only interested in one of the topics you write about. So offering them the option to find your sub-topics in a place of their own, leaves the choice to the reader.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please share it in the comments…

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.

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.

Last night I visited the Overtime event in Maastricht, which was supposed to focus on social networking on a professional level. It turned out to be more of an event similar to a night out, but then for business people. I had been looking into the different ways of preparing myself for such an event, i.e. by reading a post like this. But preparation isn’t everything…

Of course I make use of a few other social networking tools, which reside in the cloud, i.e. LinkedIn.com. Through such a networking site it is easy to stay in touch with people you worked with, (ex)colleagues, classmates, etc. mainly focused on a professional level. Connecting on LinkedIn however is not quite the same as connecting on a social networking event, but the outcome at an event can be much higher than with only connecting with a former colleague or future business partner. Due to the fact that face to face meetings make a bigger impression, putting the positive or negative impression aside.

Remember your days at school where you had to present for the first time and the feeling of a whole classroom listening to you, was taking your breathe away… Compared to presenting this is more about approaching, connecting and trying to find a level of interest to get the conversation started, but I’m looking to improve this part of me. I know a few of my unexplored areas and I’m willing to improve this. I will continue to improve myself for these events and in the near future I will visit another similar event, hopefully more focused on social networking for professionals.

I think that just like with presenting for the 1st time, it starts with:  Just do it!