It seems these days that people decorate their homes, choose their friends, food and clothes, determine their career path and employer, and organize their lives all in terms of what looks good on Instagram.

Doesn’t matter if the meal tastes good, as long as it photographs well. The same for everything else.

As long as a story can be spun and curated to impress people who aren’t known, and probably never will be, people will do/buy it.

And if an experience isn’t documented with pictures and posted online it might as well not have happened.

No kidding.

I actually overheard a guy say as much. Apparently his phone’s camera stopped working and he was grousing that the money spent on the trip was wasted.

What a strange world these people live in.

Is it your world?

I’m so glad it’s not mine.

Image credit: Aleks Grynis

Yesterday we revisited why tuit culture is bad for companies and I commented that it even worse when it grabs you personally.

Round tuits are the visual symbol of procrastination, something I have intimate knowledge of and experience with — years ago I was even crowned Queen of procrastination by a delegation of friends and family.

While it is possible to tame the tuits in your life, it’s important to be aware when the ROI changes from positive to negative.

I posted this mantra around my home years ago that helped — Do it when you think about it; Don’t think about doing it.

I forgot to put it back up when I moved 15 years ago and I seem to have backslid badly.

Something else I learned long ago and previously wrote about. It applies to the tuits that sabotage your best efforts of prioritization and it goes like this, why do today what doesn’t need to be done at all?

Back then it referred to so-called busy work, but these days the worst offending tuits that don’t need to be done involve the constant alerts, social media, FOMO, and TMI.

In other words, all the stuff we convince ourselves must be done to keep the sky from falling.

Which it won’t.

Tuits are much like dragons, you can’t slay all of them at once and some don’t need slaying; they can just be ignored.

Some need only a little kick to disable them, as opposed to the concentrated effort required to slay them, and some can even be flipped, making social media stuff into round tuits.

Image credit: brett jordan

I, and dozens of others, have written on the negative and downright destructive effects from social media’s FOMO.

However, I hadn’t given any thought to the idea that it had invaded the workplace, too.

As if email [at work] wasn’t bad enough at cultivating FOMO, we now have a new generation of real-time tools like chat to stoke it. Yet another thing that asks for your continuous partial attention all day on the premise that you can’t miss out.

FOMO is just as detrimental at work as it is personally. It distracts, interrupts conversations, and destroys focus.

Basecamp noticed and not only created a solution, but also gave it a catchy, sharable name.

People should be missing out! Most people should miss out on most things most of the time. That’s what we try to encourage at my company, Basecamp. JOMO! The joy of missing out.

It’s JOMO that lets you turn off the firehose of information and chatter and interruptions to actually get the right shit done. It’s JOMO that lets you catch up on what happened today as a single summary email tomorrow morning rather than with a drip-drip-drip feed throughout the day.

Once again, Basecamp hits a homerun. (Two previous posts, here and here, talk about others.)

If you’re impressed with Basecamp’s ideas, you’ll not only enjoy It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, by Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, you’ll also find solutions you can use.

Image credit: Basecamp

I rarely disagree with what Ryan’s writes, but I feel so strongly about yesterday’s post that I need to say something.

Constant rushing as part of the human condition is a very recent thing, but it fits perfectly with the recent attitude that being busy proves/raises your value.

Think about it, can you really see Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Lau Tzu, Sun Tzu, Voltaire, or, more recently, Churchill, Gates or Obama rushing around and not taking time to think?

I don’t believe that being in constant motion, rushing here and there, never taking time to read a book, play with your kids, revel in love and affection, or, yes, even smell the roses, is embedded in our DNA.

I think rushing goes hand-in-hand with being wired 24/7, FOMO, the constant demands of notifications, and the driving force of social media and smartphones.

And, as I’ve said before (and am likely to say again), no matter how long I live I doubt I’ll ever understand the fragility of egos that need to prove their value so badly they are willing to give up their lives to do it.

Image credit: deargdoom57

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

The words and images people share through social media have enormous spin.

This is especially true in the startup world where image is everything and perception is key to the next round of funding or investment.

The purpose is to tell the world how world-changing the tech, amazing the team, great the opportunity and how perfectly they are executing.

In other words, they are ‘crushing their goals’, ‘wowing the world’ and ‘killing it’.

Not only that, they are doing it with nary a bump or pothole along the way.

(If you believe that I have a great deal on a lovely orange bridge that would look great in your backyard after you IPO.)

Lee Hower, Co-founder & Partner of NextView Ventures and former entrepreneur at LinkedIn and PayPal, wrote a very needed commentary regarding the hyperbole that irrigates the startup ecosystem.

As he says, “not everybody is killing it and certainly not all the time.”

If anything, the constant social media barrage claiming to be ‘killing it’ is increasing denial, making it harder to admit the challenges, let alone actual problems, and further limiting entrepreneurs ability to talk about it.

Two years ago I wrote about the high incidence of depression and suicide among entrepreneurs and it hasn’t improved.

Entrepreneurs who go public do so after the fact offering useful insights on how they overcame. While this is valuable, it can make it even more difficult for those in the throes, with no one to talk to.

Entrepreneurship is a double-edged sword; while it can be enormously rewarding, it can also destroy and even kill you — or all of the above.

There are two important take-aways in all this.

1. Don’t believe everything you see/hear about how others are doing.
2. Never forget that your pursuits won’t thrive unless you survive.

Ttake care of yourself.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I, along with many others, have written about the need for mindfulness, the importance of quiet and the dangers of distraction and FOMO.  

Joe Hollier and Kai Tang sum it up nicely.

Solitude and boredom are essential to creativity or producing any sort of serious work. We are becoming scared of boredom, scared of solitude, scared of conversations with ourself.

They also believe in the value of boredom.

Capacity for boredom is at the root of observation. Observation inspires science, art, change, and opportunity. Have we become afraid of our inner lives? I think that we will find ourselves much happier when we are able to look forward to boredom, and to actually aspire for it, instead of being afraid of it.

But apparently there’s actually a market for a solution to providing the first two and reducing the dangers of the third.

A market to combat tech’s intentional effort to addict.

Being entrepreneurs, Hollier and Tang are going after that market, with a ‘back to the future’ solution.

It’s called the Light Phone and its tagline is “your phone away from phone.”

It’s beautiful, sexy and only makes calls.

And at only $150 it’s an affordable way to reenter the real world, rejoin the humane (not a typo) race and create the world in which you want to live.

Image credit: Light Phone

It’s amazing to me, but looking back at more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

A couple of years ago I cited research that showed how the vagus nerve connects your brain to your heart and that, like muscles, it needs exercise to stay strong; screen time weakens that connection. I also predicted that the research would fall on deaf ears if it fell at all. Sometimes I hate when I’m right, so here it is again. Read it carefully, share it with all your friends and then plan your own vagus exercise routine.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

People’s preoccupation with their screens has been blamed for many things and if you’ve been around someone who kept sneaking peeks while talking you know how annoying that is.

But did you know it messes up not only your brain, but also your capacity for connection, friendship, empathy, as well as your actual physical health?

Texting even messes up your infant’s future!

New parents may need to worry less about genetic testing and more about how their own actions — like texting while breast-feeding or otherwise paying more attention to their phone than their child — leave life-limiting fingerprints on their and their children’s gene expression.

It’s not just a case of being distracted.

Your vagus nerve connects your brain to your heart and how you handle your social connections affects the vagal tone, which, like muscle tone, can improve with exercise and that, in turn, increases the capacity for connection, friendship and empathy.

In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of “use it or lose it.” If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.

Do I think this research will actually make a difference in people’s actions?

No!

Even if the information becomes widespread I don’t think people would give up the instant gratification of being mentioned or conquer their FOMO and focus instead on quality face time.

It doesn’t seem a big deal right now, but look into the future at a world that doesn’t just lack connection and empathy, but is filled with people who aren’t even capable of it.

I’m glad I won’t be around.

One last item; a short essay that says better than I have in the past exactly why I don’t carry a cell phone. Enjoy!

Flickr image credit: Digitpedia Com

Everyone complains about information overload.

Playwright Richard Forman has a term for it.

“Pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button”.

Psychologist and behavioral neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, author of the upcoming book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, recommends retraining your brain.

“Our brains are equipped to deal with the world the way it was many thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers. Back then the amount of information that was coming at us was much less and it came at us much more slowly.”

But Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has a much simpler solution.

“I deleted my Facebook account completely. I found it was just overwhelming me. I’m only on Twitter, I’m on SalesforceOne, which is my internal one for work, I’m on email, and that’s it. And I’m limited to that. I’m trying not to take on more stuff. I was with a friend this weekend, he’s got his Twitter, his Facebook, he has his Snapchat, he’s got all these – too much.”

Of course, part of the overload is work-related, but it’s amazing how much is pure trivia driven by FoMO and/or the need to impress by sounding knowledgeable about a twist in Game of Thrones.

You are the only person who can evaluate just how necessary your various information streams are sooner rather than later.

Because even the smallest stream adds to the river in which it is oh, so easy to drown.

Then you need gather your courage, follow Benioff’s lead and shut down the unnecessary streams.

Your sanity will thank you.

Flickr image credit: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

People’s preoccupation with their screens has been blamed for many things and if you’ve been around someone who kept sneaking peeks while talking you know how annoying that is.

But did you know it messes up not only your brain, but also your capacity for connection, friendship, empathy, as well as your actual physical health?

Texting even messes up your infant’s future!

New parents may need to worry less about genetic testing and more about how their own actions — like texting while breast-feeding or otherwise paying more attention to their phone than their child — leave life-limiting fingerprints on their and their children’s gene expression.

It’s not just a case of being distracted.

Your vagus nerve connects your brain to your heart and how you handle your social connections affects the vagal tone, which, like muscle tone, can improve with exercise and that, in turn, increases the capacity for connection, friendship and empathy.

In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of “use it or lose it.” If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.

Do I think this research will actually make a difference in people’s actions?

No!

Even if the information becomes widespread I don’t think people would give up the instant gratification of being mentioned or conquer their FOMO and focus instead on quality face time.

It doesn’t seem a big deal right now, but look into the future at a world that doesn’t just lack connection and empathy, but is filled with people who aren’t even capable of it.

I’m glad I won’t be around.

One last item; a short essay that says better than I have in the past exactly why I don’t carry a cell phone. Enjoy!

Flickr image credit: Digitpedia Com

I admit it; as anyone who is a frequent reader I am not a Facebook devotee; for that matter, I’m not a lover of social media in general, which includes MMOG sites such as World of Warcraft.

What people who know me don’t understand is that my dislike goes beyond my personal feelings.

Gently put, I am tired of and disgusted with number of intelligent, talented people who contact me for help balancing the demands on their time.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to help people and rarely charge for one-off questions, but it’s getting ridiculous.

For years I found that the problem wasn’t so much one of time management, but one of saying yes too often.

But, as the saying goes, that was then and this is now.

Now, after a week of time tracking exercises and analysis they come back and admit to two, five, eight or even more hours spent on various forms of social media.

Most are surprised; they had no realization that the number was so high.

I suggest they cut back and use the time where they feel pinched—the reason they contacted me in the first place.

Some are sheepish, others are defiant, but most are reluctant to reduce their time.

I didn’t need to read about “FOMO addiction” (the fear of missing out on something or someone more interesting, exciting or better than what we’re currently doing), I was hearing about it directly from the addicts.

So it was with great delight that I read that there is a growing rebellion.

The main reasons for their social media sabbaticals were not having enough time to dedicate to pruning their profiles, an overall decrease in their interest in the site, and the general sentiment that Facebook was a major waste of time.
About 4 percent cited privacy and security concerns as contributing to their departure. Although those users eventually resumed their regular activity, another 20 percent of Facebook users admitted to deleting their accounts.
(…)The report found that 42 percent of Facebook users from the ages of 18 to 29 said that the average time they spent on the site in a typical day had decreased in the last year. A much smaller portion, 23 percent, of older Facebook users, those over 50, reported a drop in Facebook usage over the same period.

Perhaps people are finally kicking their FOMO addiction, facing up to their time usage and figuring out that there is more to life than what’s online.

I find it most interesting that the decrease in Facebook usage is twice as high in the young (18-29) than in the over 50 crowd.

Who’d a thunk it?

Flickr image credit: birgerking