Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: distraction

Are you ready for Twitter?

Are you really ready for Twitter?

Your friends just signed up for Twitter. Since then, they started doing practically everything there--exchange gossips, share stories, links, and others and you feel left out most of the time. And now they are even following your favorite celeb hotties. So you go to Twitter.com and you click the Sign up now tab. If the above scenario seems familiar to you, then you are one of the many people (and even businesses!) who sign up for Twitter and other similar sites due to "fear factor" .

This is not good because maintaining an online account is like having a pet bird (lovebird, cockatoo, parrot, whatever!). You cannot just take one at home and expect it to  grow on its own.

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  • You can leave it once in a while but you definitely have to feed it (with your updates) or it will die.
  • It won't bug you if you haven't fed it for days, but it will surely die a slow and sad death.
  • If you want it to be healthy, you have to feed it well (with quality, relevant, and useful updates).

This is why even when all your friends have their own pets already, you can't just dive into the same thing just so you can relate. You need something more than peer pressure for you to sustain whatever online account that you will start. So here's a rundown of things that you need to ask if you are in doubt about signing up for Twitter:

1. Do you have a lot of useful information to share to the world?

2. Are the people you want to share those information with on Twitter?

3. Are the people in #2 unreachable in other platforms (like IM, Gtalk, or Facebook)?

4. Do you really want the world to share what you are doing every time (even where your location is) to quite a number of people?

5. Do you really want to know about what other people are doing/up to in real time (as they update)?

6. Do you have a big, diverse, and scattered network such that friends from the same group/organization/school/company cannot be reached in the same site?

7. Do you want to establish your online presence in different platforms as a way of building and maintaining your online reputation?

8. Are you open minded and can you take comments or criticisms lightly and positively?

9. Are you capable of dropping constructive comments to other people as well?

10. Do you know how to manage your time well?

If you answered mostly yes, then go ahead and click here to sign up. I am almost sure that Twitter will be of help to you.

If you answered mostly no, then your time is better off spent somewhere else. You surely don't need another distraction to keep you from finishing your tasks.

I hope you find the above list helpful. :)

I got overdosed.

HISTORY

  • I used to list down my agenda before I go to the Internet shop.
  • I didn't have my own internet connection until last semester.
  • I managed to be productive in an hour or so of staying in an Internet shop.

COMPLAINTS

  • Waiting in line in those computer shops again
  • My flash disk always getting infected by NewFolder.exe, Funny UST Scandal.exe, or ravmon.exe
  • Too limited time to work on my research or home works
  • No extra time for an online job, ergo, no chance to amass MONEY MONEY MONEY
  • Incomplete productivity

MEDICATION: Broadband installation at home

PSYCHOSOCIAL REACTIONS

1) I-can’t-work-with-all-these-distractions effect

Do not get me wrong. I do enjoy chatting with my friends because it actually de-stresses, not distracts, me. But the fact that the list of the things that you can do online is almost endless, my distractions also became endless. When a distraction is just a click away (or when it conveniently presents itself to you), how can you ever run away from it?

2. I-am-a-busy-bee-do-not-talk-to-me-world effect

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Whenever my mom sees all these opened windows in White Winona's desktop, she would often conclude that I am in engaged in an online meeting with my group mates and for that I must not be disturbed. Well for one, she is not always right. But I never bothered to correct her. And I bet I am not the only guilty person here. With all those must-be-explored sites, must-be-read contents, must-be-tried-apps, I can spend the entire day just tinkering with my laptop. I can also fool myself (and the people who look at my desktop) to believing that I am a master of productivity with all those sticky notes found all over my desktop. But the truth is they are just there and they can stay there for as long as they want. See the fall sense of busy-ness AND productivity there? So at the end of the day, I will be an exhausted person (with strained eyes, back, and neck) and unupdated daughter/sister/niece/granddaughter who, in fact, did not really learn much but gossips and did not really accomplish much but page-hop.

3. I-might-be-missing-out-on-something-somewhere effect

The idea that conversations done online serve to supplement (or complement) whatever talks I have (or just had) with my friends, my family, classmates, colleagues, and others face-to-face, I feel the need to be always visible. You know the feeling when it’s been 24 hours and you haven’t logged in any of your SNS or YM accounts, like you are missing half of your life by not doing so? So you make yourself accessible online, with an attempt to shun distracters by appending that Busy icon. Well obviously, you can't expect the trick to always work. And for fear that I'm  missing something online, I realized that there are far more important things in the REAL WORLD that I'm actually missing.

4. I-feel-like-saying-something-to-you-but-you-must-not-or-cannot-know-so-I-will-be-purposely-vague effect

Ironically, inasmuch as people are actually enjoying the idea of sharing bits of their lives (in their blogs, twits, shoutouts, statuses, etc) for the world to see, most of these I find superficial. If there were any that really mirrored what a person is going through (raw emotions and all that), the entry would be rather vague to protect some identities. I did that one too many times already. But while it can be therapeutic, it can actually feel pointless at times because at the end of it, you never really got your message across that person/thing/whatever. Apparently, the more freedom (and avenues) that I get to express what I feel/think/see, the more cautious I become, to the point of being ambiguous.

RECOMMENDATIONS

So how will a person like me combat all these seemingly negative effects of the medication that I thought will make me a healthy, productive individual? I will use two antidotes starting today.

  1. Create/Revive my personal dashboard (a really good prescription from barrycade). Selective exposure is totally the key because hyperlinks are obviously everywhere. To avoid being pointed to all those different (unnecessary) directions, I shall first expose myself to things that REALLY need my attention. This may seem too limiting but if I ever get idle, I would definitely love to explore sites outside my pseudo-bordered world.
  2. Stay invisible when I do not have any business online. Out of respect (if not need for gossip), I always entertain friends (not just random strangers) who talk to me online, but my work gets compromised. If someone really needs me, there are so many ways to contact me (leave an offline message, text, call, email) without me being pressured to set aside whatever tasks I have at hand.

Do you have any other recommendations?  

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