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April 27, 2009

Hyperconnected II


Last week I responded to a concern about our increasing hyperconnective-ness. Doug Johnson at The Blue Skunk Blog had a great post on the same issue. Look at what one of his commentor's had to say about this:

"I have been feeling increasingly resentful of the time I've been investing online. During the March school break we have, I did not blog, read my feeds, check in to Twitter or surf. I thought that one week would be enough but that one week extended into a month. In fact this is the first time since the end of March that I've read anything online beyond my email. I must say that I was feeling extremely guilty for disconnecting myself until I read this post and found that others are feeling the same. I am coming to the realization that I can't know it all and can't do it all and am giving myself permission to be flexible and re-wire as needed, depending upon my work load, personal and family responsibilities."

On my own post JenFW had this to say:

"I'm still struggling to find balance. I feel pressure from many sources to do it all, and I simply can't. I don't even want to, but how do you choose what'sbest?

I know there's no best. Still, it's hard. I'm saturated, and I suspect readers are as well."

I gave some advice in my earlier post, but this seems to be much bigger of an issue than I realized. Especially the guilt aspect. I would highly recommend you check out the work of Mark Forster because he has some great things to say on this topic, like his comparing your choices to a menu in a restaurant. When you look at a menu and choose our meal, you're basically saying, "No thanks," to everything else on that menu. This isn't a cause for guilt or concern for the most part. We might like the place and come back to try other items, but we know that there are limits to both or bellies and our wallets and we're fine with that.

Being "connected" or using all these "web 2.0" tools should be like that. Go ahead and try some, but only commit to what works for you. And don't let anyone let you feel guilty about your choices. As I mentioned before, I don't use Facebook. I tried it for a few months but realized I'm in contact with all the people I want to be in contact with and it just felt like "one more thing" to me. My brother, on the other hand, loves it. He's now connected to a whole slew of high school friends he'd moved away from and is happily catching up. But he doesn't Twitter or blog or anything else. To each his own. Don't you think it's better to be good at a few things than spread too thin?

We all have only 24 hours in a day and have to decide how we're going to spend it.

(image cc flickr)