Networking and Sleeping
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed under Uncategorized and tagged delicious, diigo, ning, organisational tips, social networking, twitter
I’m behind in blog posts, I haven’t tweeted much lately, I can’t remember the last time I logged into that site! Oh, god, here’s another one. Hey looks cool. I’ll join. Woops, now I have to update it?! But, I’ve already got something similar. But everyone else is on it…Will I miss out? I said I’d start that wiki, but haven’t put anything on it yet. I started that group, but haven’t posted anything! Oh, and blog posts. Need more blog posts…
I’ve been out of the loop for the past three weeks or so and consequently feel fairly disconnected. Ah, this happens every now and again through those stages of insane life busy-ness that we all undoubtedly have at some point. While trying to reconnect myself though I started thinking about what makes someone a valuable member for their social networks (even if they drop off the face of cyberspace for a while!). It’s challenging to keep up with all the things that are going on - joining this that or the other new application/tool only to then discover that, as valuable as it is, it’s another account to keep up to date.
I am a member of quite a few different things, but I know I don’t use them all to my full potential or the network’s full potential. I do contribute, but I’m sure I could do more. Although, that’s a dangerous way to think sometimes, as there is always more that can be done, or something that can be improved.
I can’t possibly contribute to every network that I’m part of everyday or else I would never have time to plan for school, cook a meal (even though I try to avoid doing that anyway) or simply sit and chat with my husband.
What does it mean to be a valuable network member? Some of my ideas follow. Please leave your own in a comment!
- regular contribution of quality material (blog posts or useful links)
- regular direct contact with key people in your network. You can’t build effective relationships by relying solely on a profile page or a few blog posts
- regular reading of and commenting on other members’ contributions
How to be an effective network member and still have time to sleep:
There really is no secret. For me, it’s about focus. It’s the same when facing a reader full of feeds and feeling overwhelmed. It’s about deciding what I want to get out of a particular network for a given session and focusing on that. I think of it this way:
Problem: Haven’t written on my blogs for a while. Need to write better quality posts
Solution: Decide that for this afternoon or whenever that my aim is to write however many blog posts. Do that. Don’t have Twitter on. Email is No Go Zone.
Problem: Haven’t had an good conversations on Twitter lately. Feeling out of the loop. Watching too many good conversations with interesting people who aren’t following me!
Solution: Ignore my blogs. Don’t visit anyone elses. Don’t worry about commenting for a while. Just focus on putting up some good thoughts in Twitter, posting some good links and maybe follow a couple of new people.
Problem: Delicious links a mess and don’t even know how to use Diigo yet.
Solution: Ignore blogging. Forget my podcast. Maybe leave Twitter on though cause undoubtedly there will be someone there who can help me out.
Problem: Have not even logged into many ning networks!
Solution: Question whether I really need to be part of them all? If I don’t have time to contribute, should I even be there? Probably not. Then, get cup of tea. Take laptop into bedroom. Climb back into bed. Stay there until important ones have been chosen and contributed to. Maybe add something to them once a week or fortnight. Can only do what I can do.
I think the key thing for me to remember is that in this age of mass amounts of (digital and very easy to access) information I cannot possibly know, be part of or absorb everything. I don’t really want to be a ‘jack of all trades and a master of none.’ I want my main blog, technoLOTE (language teaching and technology) to grow, so that will be my main focus.
Oh to be a Master… 
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Nice post, Jess. I went through a phse of joining everything but have pulled back now. I stick with my email groups because I can look at email at my own time. Not so keen on twitter because of its real time ability to distract me. As for Ning, joined and left again because of time constraints. As you say, cant do everything all the time. cheers Sarah
Jess,
You don’t mind if I just copy your post and paste it into my own blog, do you? Maybe that will work for me– instead of actually writing posts I can just find the posts that express my thoughts, already written by someone else!
I watch (with bleary eyes) others in the “network” and have no idea how they manage to live in the offline world, cleaning the house and such, while maintaining what seems like a 24/7 online presence, posting multiple blog posts in a day and tweeting in a constant stream.
If you’ll excuse me now, I’m going to sleep! Good night
Hi Jess
I can sooooo totally relate to where you are at. Having two blogs does make it hard and your situation is different from mine. If choice was an option I would focus effort on the one blog because that makes the job easier. Two blogs splits the focus, creates a lot more work and is harder to create readership (unless it’s The Edublogger).
Life balance — well I’m an extreme multitasker.
Several things that you have stated that I have not really thought about. Should we form small groups of learners and follow just them. I feel like I am trying to read and follow too many people. May be we should form smaller learning groups of say 7-12 people? Would that help those who are struggling?
Just curious.
Andrea: you’re excused! Good night!
Sue (a.k.a) The Extremem Multi-tasker: Hmm, yes one blog would be much easier! My focus is technoLOTE, but I really like to be able to write about just anything here, which I can’t really do over there because of the focus and audience I’m targeting. Ah, I’ll get there. I think it might be time to drop a few feeds from my reader and maybe not join any new networks? Ai ya!
Bill: I like your idea of small groups to follow and work with - why not? We too often get caught up thinking we have to know read and do everything. Quality over quantity would be a good way to approach it all I think. Hmm, must take come of my own advice. Right, let me at my feeds…
Funny Jess we had this discussion ages ago about having two blogs :). Can understand your decision however for me having the two blogs makes blogging feel more like work.
(cross-posted from Twitter, after reading Sue Waters tweet that you shouldn’t say “nice post” on Twitter unless you say the same in a comment to the post ROFL. And she’s right, mind you - I love Sue’s spunk.)
cburell (@ - W): @jessmcculloch loving your networking and sleeping post link » you hit the syndromes so well, and with flair. 2M Ago
I am with Andrea - I could get another post done!
I’ve pulled back from a lot - right after joining everything. But I stopped and looked in on twitter tonight and only clicked what intrigued me.
I loved your post!
@Clay Well @murcha wrote a really good post on commenting and asked me in twitter whether as an edublogger I like comments. Well had to answer straight — sure we all like to be told our posts are nice in Twitter but it’s not the same as the level of reflection we achieve if someone takes the time to respond. Especially if they challenge our view or provide extra insight into a topic. Besides it does motivation us to post.
So here Jess
is another comment
@Sue,
I _said_ you were right about that already, you
Srsly, I totally agree for all the reasons you mention.
I had to tell Miguel the same thing when he tweeted feedback on a post i wrote recently that i thought would enrich the comment thread.
So yup, I agree.
(And Jess gets another comment.)
I can sooo relate to this. I really can’t come up to speed on Twitter and do not do justice to half of what I have out there.
Life is just too hectic!
Cheers
Cross-post from Twitter:
@cburell @dswaters you two are very funny having a conversation in the comments on my blog - about commenting. You are right, it’s just LOVELY to receive comments
@xpatasia Hi Paul! thanks for stopping by. Yes, live is just too hectic and doesn’t seem to be getting any less so. I just wrote this comment on Dean Shareski’s latest post about this same sort of thing:
Thank you for writing this. It’s great to know that I’m not the only one who was thinking this way - That keeping up with the joneses doesn’t really matter and that it’s ok not to read everything. I’ve even read a post today about not caring how many subscribers you have. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that! I’ve decided not to use things like Tweetscan and Twitter link monitor - if I miss Twitter conversations, then too bad. Love the reservoir and river metaphor, but the bit I like the best is ‘messiness as a virtue.’ I struggle with that, but realise that I’m fighting an ever-losing battle and should really look for the pleasure in messiness of read and unread posts, of updated and un-updated (is that even a word?!) of finished and unfinished conversations. It means there’s always something new to learn and discover, but that if you don’t want to, that’s fine. There is so much value in making all this information into what we want it to be for ourselves rather than trying to keep up with silly standards or all write/tweet about the same thing. If we do too much we tend to lack focus and so our work may lose meaning. I will treat the Web my way and if means missing out on some stuff, then so be it.
“jessmcculloch (@ - W): @cburell @dswaters you two are vey funny having a conversation in the comments on my blog 10M Ago”
–funnier still: I just went to Dean Shareski’s post BEFORE you cross-posted here, and commented right after you, and playfully-seriously said:
“I only read the last two sentences, since I like to read back-to-front. Wonder what the rest of the post said. Loved the conclusion.
Tee hee.
This points to all sorts of fun things. Virality as a new road to “classicism” in UGC, like Pausch or Fisch; the decline of RSS after all our hopes so very recently (I’m thinking of how I too use my network as my filter more than my feedreader these days - I came here b/c you tweeted it, you shameless self-promoter. Figured it would be better than Buffy re-runs).
And it’s absolutely hilarious that Jess’ comment, just above mine, references the great Flying Spaghetti Monster, which I just tweeted to her in a link today.
Call me crazy, but I think Twitter is the new RSS, cocktail party, exhibition hall, Spaghetti Monster, and diaper-changer. What doesn’t it do?
I’m joking, but seriously - does network size on Twitter correlate at all to neural activity? I’m following about 500 people now, find it easy enough to do, and love how many of them are from circles outside of education. I don’t know where this wave will end, how much bigger it will get, or what it will morph into - cut to Baron Munchhausen flying ship - but I know surfers like me look at it in awe.
Nice post.”
@Jess Well @cburrell and I are the ultimate multitaskers and have had conversations across three posts - Graham Wegner, Clay’s blog and mine - all at the same time. And in many ways I’ve now changed my view point and think Clay is right (but don’t tell him
).
But can’t believe that while I was busy at work you two were up to???? which meant I had to catch up by reading Dean’s post to get the drift of what the? And here I was thinking I would “mark all as read” :).
And so here is another comment - now I know time is short but I think you both owe Anne @murcha a comment.
Great post Jess! Thanks for sharing your potential solutions!
I realize I am way to “type-a” to handle the wealth of networking, reading, learning opportunities online. I want to let go of some things, I really do, but I have this “hoarding” mentality (thank my mother for that!) that forces me to save everything. I might not read it all, but it’s bookmarked somewhere - often harder to find than if I just searched for it anew.
Just read through Dean’s post thanks to @dswaters and @cburell’s comments. I’m the one with glasses of water all over the house. Ask my husband - it’s true.
Maybe a session at the therapists is what I really need