Categories: Articles

Removing The Noise

Too many people are looking for too many ways to follow too many people and places. Your best bet is to do the opposite…

Did you know that you can have your 140-character tweets from Twitter also cross-posted into your Facebook status, LinkedIn status and now even into your Google Buzz without doing much of anything besides letting each platform know that you would like this happen? And while that may sound convenient for you to ensure that anybody and everybody who is following you can get your information, it should come as no surprise that we’re quickly all barrelling towards an information and attention crash.

Even the folks just getting into RSS and Social Media are grappling with where to find the quality information.

If someone wanted to make the next million dollars in the online world, they would create an app or platform that would help people remove the noise, not add to it. But let’s be realistic, no technology or filters in the world are better than human beings at aggregating and editing their content.

So, here’s the challenge…

Don’t add more noise to your life.. start removing the noise. It’s not important to follow every Blog, and it’s impossible to listen to every Podcast. If you’ve spent more than five minutes on Twitter, the river of tweets and the speed with which they flow makes every conversation look, feel and last a couple of seconds (at most). Become a better filter. If you’re following someone and they’re really not adding any value to your life (your growth, development and education), drop them. If you follow a Blog but never get to it because life happens, drop it. If you’re a publisher of content (text, audio, video, images, whatever…) think about what you’re publishing (noise vs. value).

Following a few of quality will give you the quantity you need.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.