Matthew Cornell

OK, I admit that after programming for 20 years and devouring every new idea, tool, library, and methodology out there, I've now become a rather late adopter. Email, for example. What is it? Is it useful? I'll have a special report in a future post. My practice is to try the latest and greatest just long enough to get a sense of it, then drop or keep as needed, with drop being the operative word. (It's an example of "minus" - see Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide: Productivity Lessons From Basic Math.) In this case I've been playing with Twitter and found it a very mixed bag. If you've not heard of it, it's a simple web-based program that lets you post short text messages ("Tweets" that are limited to 140 characters) that others can subscribe to ("follow"). Your posts, along with those of everyone you follow, are shown chronologically on your main page. More at Wikipedia entry and the Twitter FAQ. Additionally, there are many tools to make entering faster, get updates on your cell phone, share photos, analyze your use, find others, etc. So how do you use it effectively? There are over a million hits when you Google twitter productivity, with good starting points being Lifehack's Twitter: Use it Productively and the many Lifehacker Twitter articles. You might also enjoy the CNET pro/con articles: The case against Twitter and In defense of Twitter. Rather than rehashing all this, I'd like to give you the IdeaMatt perspective on how this tool can be used productively, and hopefully get a chuckle out of you too. But the bottom line? My unprincipled exploration determined it to be a massive waste of time, at least for me in the way I used it. It was addictive, fascinating, agitating, and fun. Like any tool, you must be clear about why you're using it, and control its use in accordance with your work. That is, like email, use it to further your goals, and keep control over it. This thing has real potential to suck you in. Following is what I tried, what I learned, my tips, plus my stab at using it for humor practice. Enjoy!

What I tried

To get to know it I played with Twitter in the following ways (with these results):

• Accountability tool: Use it to tweet a public commitment, e.g., losing weight, clearing your inbox, or writing. Related: A Daily Planning Experiment: Two Weeks Of Accountable Rigorous Action and Update on the "Twitter Diet" for an example. My assessment: Potentially very helpful.
• Interpretation: Express your world view and find like-minded people. Great current examples: The election and the economic meltdown. Assessment: You might feel better, you might feel worse, and you might turn off followers. (I've had that happen here, and I've learned some hard lessons as a result.)
• Micro-blogging: Share helpful tips, ideas, quotes, and links in a very short space. (Staying within the 140 limit is a real challenge, but good writing practice.) More on this use here. Assessment: Potentially valuable if you are reaching the right audience, with the benefits much like a regular blog: help people, establish repute, clarify what you're thinking, and getting practice writing. My current thinking is that using Twitter this way, while possible, might be better done via a more dedicated tool like Tumblr. Tumblr is more structured and allows more characters. I tried it a while back at ideamatt.tumblr.com. It's probably moot at this point - Twitter's popularity makes it a defacto standard. Thoughts?
• Humor practice: Practice being playful and getting people to laugh. Assessment: Hands down I had the most fun using it this way. That said, I find being genuinely funny (not just sarcastic, say) to be good hard work. And writing funny, esp. in 140 words, is really hard. A good little "Tweet" that makes you laugh is an act of genius. Some of the ones I loved were "real" ones like jdickerson and communicatrix, plus a host of clever fake ones like FakeSarahPalin, fakemerlinmann, and of course fakedavidallen. I've shared some of mine below. So who are your favorites?
• Being helpful: Share tips, in my case micro-productivity ones (I've listed some below). Assessment: Possibly helpful. Again, like the micro-blogging application, value depends on what your followers hope to get.
• Inspiration: Share inspiring words and thoughts. In my case I pulled out a few from my idea pickle jar. Assessment: See above. Note: When your words help someone, it really feels good.
• Connecting: Read the people you want to get to know, examine what their lives are like and how they think. A corellary: Sharing events from my life too. There's a risk here - what do people really care about? There are many absurd examples, e.g., "At the airport." "In the toilet." "Picking up a knife." and "Buttering the bread." Assessment: Possibly very high value, perhaps the most important use?
• Discovery: Find interesting things that like-minded followees found valuable. In this sense they're acting as collaborative filters. (I talked about them in Why Blogruptcy Is A Great Idea But Doesn't Work, And Why SPAM Is Easy To Fix And Information Overload Isn't.) Some personal favorites: Jon Stewart: John McCain's Big Acceptance Speech and Tina Fey: Couric/Palin Open. Spore and The Official iPhone and iPod Touch Application are cool too.

Note: Much of this revolves around helping others, and so benefits from my guideline for How To Help People - Be curious about others, keep lots of high-quality inputs coming in, and share potentially valuable ones with others.

Conclusion, tips, and The Ultimate Twitter Productivity Tip

Some final points:

• Like any activity with followers, there's an ego trap involved in getting sucked in to watching how your follower count grows (or not). You can tell who does this by when they Tweet about it!
• I suggest setting up multiple accounts, each matching the image you want to promote and your goals for each. For example, a business one, a personal one, at least one "secret" account (e.g., a "fake" one - see above - or a "guilt" one such as iluvamericanidol :-)
• Twitter is a significant information source, and needs managing accordingly. Be purposeful in using it, especially when adding someone or exploring/following up on something. And like any media diet, purge and re-evaluate regularly. Maybe this is a good guide: Drop *everyone* except a) people you want a relationship with (friends, prospective clients), b) people make you laugh or think or learn, and c) people who are *useful* filters, not distractors.

For now I'll drop Twitter until I define exactly how I'll use it, with the focus being establishing business relationships that lead to consulting work. (Note: I would absolutely love to hear your consulting success stories in using it this way, i.e., to get business.) And the ultimate tip? Like my answer to What is the ultimate productivity tip?, I have a meta-answer: For me it's probably twitter.com/account/delete. The catch? "Temporarily disabled." :-) What do you think? Any Twitter thinking and stories you'd like to share?

Getting people to laugh. In 140 characters or less.

I don't like to boast, but my entry #227 was voted one of the 10,000 Funniest Tweets of the Millisecond on Aug 21st (millisecond #56,324,112). I humbly submit the following, in hopes that one or two will tickle you.

• [On cats] "Cat gack, like revenge, is a dish best served cold."
• [On my nice new office char] "to use: 1 align ass with seat. warning: misalignment could cause injury 2 slowly lower ass to chair 3 stop on contact. 4 work. 5 reverse"
• [On networking] "3 questions for any social situation: What do you do for a living?, What keeps you up at night?, and Are you done talking yet?"
• [On living] "'Motorcycles Are Everywhere.' Hey, look up! Psych :-)"
• [On crisis] "bad news: economy imploding, oil skyrocketing, global warming-era weather, cancer. good news: iPhone!"
• [On productivity] "never lick envelopes after eating Saltines"
• [On productivity] "I calculate: if were to re-define ellipsis from "..." to ".." global production would increase by $750 TRILLION dollars. saveaperiod.com :-)"
• [On productivity] "inbox no-nos: sorting, picking, and putting back. Applies to nose-picking as well."
• [On music] "Realized our microwave oven is a Major 7th :-) Train, Minor :-("
• [On inventions] "thought of this just now: What if paper had a sticky back that you could attach to things, but take off without ripping! Crap. Bloody 3M"
• [On safety] "sawing wood for raised bed. DARN this electricity thing is handy. Also: wondering: what if circular saw blade came loose. early Halloween!"
• [On chocolate] "Me: 'Hey - Let's try these raw Cacao beans!' One minute later: Rapid uncontrolled salivation."
• [On health] "Mobility. Sperm: good. Teeth: bad."
• [On decision-making] "any tips for getting a good verizon deal? it's so confusing and risky. just like teen sex!"

Being helpful to others

• So you're taking a few blows. That's the price of being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful - Pressfield
• It is easier to adjust ourselves to the hardships of a poor living than it is to adjust ourselves to the hardships of making a better one
• wow: We're not comfortable with an unfamiliar way to work, >>even if it's better/more organized<<
• #1 absolute productivity tip of all time: seat time!
• idea: YouTube mashup: adds a TruthOMeter to uploaded videos (Fox comes to mind). voters must provide evidence links supporting their rating
• media diet 101: kill your TV, remove all news (NPR!) from your life. TV=crap, news=unimportant/not durable. test: try 1 wk, notice no impact
• blogging, and apparently using laptop battery life as a Parkinson's Law enforcer. 11% (20 minutes) from the end!!!
• How good are you at being new to something? "You can't blame yourself for not knowing what you didn't know."
• Mac productivity tip: F11: Your single-key "get focused" tool. Now what was I doing?
• fantastic quotes from "Physics of the impossible" e.g., If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
• I like incremental file purge, not yearly: file 1, pull 2. BUT: resist urge to pull many. Like I just did. Where'd that 1/2 hour go?
• to yourself: "I should have known": either sucks (I didn't know.) or is useful (I should have listened!)
• darn I forgot how cool this is. can't wait to show my 8yo daughter: Powers of 10 http://is.gd/jNB
• sanity tip: if you have a problem in play, take great notes. date, who you talked to, what they promised. not just CYA, but relieves mind
• you *are* using Firefox smart keywords, right? ex: "is " -> http://is.gd/ . refs: http://is.gd/10SC http://is.gd/C1Z . sweet!
• try this micro experiment: use hash marks to count how many times you're tempted to "check" email. don't follow through, just count. yours?
• "Nothing stifles creativity more than fear"
• 8YO daughter sick today. reducing work expectations & exempting no-tv-during-week rule to practice Cockney accents :-)
• avid readers: remember the 50 page test: point at which you cut bait. for a movie: 20 minutes. yes, actually walk out! http://is.gd/346a
• Decision Making: a buddy suggests that if you're really vacillating between two choices, it probably doesn't matter which you choose. agree?
• Why "I'll do it later" can either kill you or save you save: defer. kill: clutter, procrastinate
• Ah, the Action Support folder. A temporary place for materials actions need to get done. For when you don't need to make a dedicated folder.
• tip: try making your meetings 50 minutes, and using the 10 left to process your notes/actions/delegated items from it
• OK fellow bloggers, contact rules: 1. have a contact page. 2. put your full name on it. 3. list an email, not a contact form. 4. stir & pour