I am Hyper Connected

I am an internet entrepreneur and that means I need to be on Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg, Techmeme, HackerNews, Google Reader etc… When news comes in on any of these sites I am one of the first people in the world to know. There are several applications on my dual screen which keep my notified of any interesting tid-bit of information that is rising in the blogosphere. I judge the value of the sites and web apps I use on how quickly they bring news to me, every second counts.

Does this sound familiar? To most people on the internet it won’t but if you’ve come to my site you probably have done so through any of the websites I’ve mentioned. This means there is a high chance you are one of the “few” (let me make a guesstimate, hundred thousand) people online who’s hyper connected and interested in anything that is going on in the web 2.0 blogosphere.

For the last week I have been reflecting upon my productivity and I am going to ask you to do the same thing. I am finally coming to a point where I start to wonder if it matters that I find out about the new Wordpress version tomorrow and not today. I love reading news, especially interesting blog posts and articles that give me knowledge. However does it really matter if I read the summaries the day after or if I am the second person in the blogosphere to know something (this was the case when Twitter bought Summize).

When is the last time you sat down and worked on one specific project for 2 hours, without having any other source of information coming in? Yesterday the electricity had to be shutdown because they were fixing a power line. I realized that all off a sudden I was without internet. I immediately went to my PDA to link it to my laptop and get a 3G connection; fortunately my phones’ battery had run out the night before. I then sat in front of the screen wondering what to do for the next hour. I opened Word and started writing a blog post. This was a change on its own because I have been using online solutions for so long now. I had my full focus on this post and really got to spend some time on it, Is blogging dead? was the result. When I looked at my statistics it became clear that this had been my most successful blog post as of yet. People spent on average a good 4 minutes and 20 seconds on my site, a lot of people read it and the comments amounted to over 2000 words.

I made a realization in that hour my power was cut. I had been more focused and productive then I had been in a long time. Currently I have taken my laptop away from my desk, am sitting in my chair with nothing but Word open, writing this blog post. Try it out sometime!

July 15, 2008 | Filed Under Mini Essays 

Comments

Viewing 6 Comments

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    in the comments of the Kaplak blog and there is a certain freedom to interacting with fandom this way. It also means that I can blog at my own leisure. I can rely on others to help provide content. My tasks thus descend to getting my startup off the ground by getting funding by doing the marketing work, networking work, being connected with the backend developer and finding people to get involved with. My other task is to generally keep informed. (But the whole startup part means I have less time to just delve into what I love because I can't spend two weeks obsessing over writing a 45,000 word document on subject of interest.) So yeah, similar issues but more free than you because of the wiki format.
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    The overhead associated with being constantly distracted is huge. In CPUs, this is called "switching cost" - every time a computer switches between tasks (threads), it has to load stuff out of its memory, load other stuff into its memory, and get going again. This is actually very inefficient.

    People work in the same way. We can only hold so much in our heads at one time, and distractions can cause to to start from zero again.

    I too am hyperconnected, and I know exactly what you mean about the cold shudder of asking "what now?" if the internet is gone.

    Services like twitter only add to the already huge load of incoming (news) data we get.

    Its just not sustainable though - every single tweet/rss item can lead to 10 minutes distraction. There are only so many hours in the day (and occasionally we need to sleep/eat/get married, etc.).

    I think we're going through an adolescent phase with data - its all so new and shiny and instant, that we cant get enough. But ultimately we'll have to grow up,and start putting strong filters on whats grabbing our attention.

    Probably software will come to our rescue here - intelligent agents interrupting as at good moments, with just the (summarized) data we need.
    In fact, it has to! We're probably too addicted to wean ourselves off alone ;)
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    I'm there...not perhaps to your extent - but Google Trends is the centerpiece of my home page, Twitter is live in Tweetdeck - Gmail is up, and there are a number of writing related sites I frequent.

    I've shifted writing styles. When I write, there are always points where I quit and think before going on. I now fill those and empty the dreck by flicking through the various "connections" in my life...then go right back to it. But I can disconnect for long periods to make things happen.

    It requires discipline to remain on the proper side of the threshold between too much connectivity and useful connectivity. Another good post.

    D
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    Because of the nature of my own blog I do try and "keep ahead" of the news, especially technology / gadget news.

    On a personal level I think I'm fairly well connected.

    I have a twitter / pownce / skitch / friendfeed / flickr / Ovi Share / last.fm account... seems like a lot....

    I also check email regularly, maybe more than I should, and am fairly regularly found on MSN and YIM...

    I also read lots of forums....

    I have no doubt that this affects productivity in my life.

    less is more maybe?
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    I'm nodding along with everything you're saying, but the bags under my eyes are showing that I probably can't keep it up. Have recently been doing some research into IM in a work environment, instant messenging v interruption management. Some research shows that many distractions in terms of emails and other information coming in can actually stimulate the brain, and makes for a more alert employee! If only I could leave it all behind when I leave the office..!
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    <img src="http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-04-08--infinite-loop.png" width="50%" height="50%" alt="Infinite Loop"/>

    We would add to the image, microblogging services, as twitter, and more webs 2.0, such as facebook, friendfeed, etc, but I think the image represents the hyperconnection situation.

    Cheers
 
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