I recently saw survey results from a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll that stated only 15 percent of Americans believe Twitter to be an important new tool for communication and I believe it.  Not because it’s true but because Twitter can be hard to understand and get the hang of at first.

I distinctly remember my first experience with Twitter when I noticed someone casually mentioning they were “putting lipstick on at a redlight”.  My first thought was “this is totally worthless”.  My how times have changed.  Not only has the growth of Twitter been off the charts (1382% to be exact), but I’ve actually started using Twitter on a regular basis and find it extremely helpful and useful in my job. (more…)

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I just read a few interesting posts by Tim Bray and Alex Payne about what to read and how to stay up to date (see below).  Much of what they say I agree with.  The simple problem is that there is just too much stuff out there that is interesting or important on some level.  Combine that with an ever expanding workload, a short attention span, and a fading memory and you have a combination that just can’t work long term.  What’s interesting is that I’ve asked several knowledge workers of one sort or another what their biggest problems are and most respond with something like …

• “too many interruptions”
• “wasting time on nonproductive tasks like email”
• “no ability to focus on key tasks”
• “excessive multitasking”

(more…)

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