Tweet or change the world. Pick one.

I've been pondering a couple of thoughts Jon Burg posted to Twitter yesterday.  Jon's tweets are protected so if you want to see them or just stay on top of his whereabouts, random thoughts, food cravings and toilet trips (or whatever it is we Twitterfolk ramble on about) you can follow him.  But for the purpose of this post, I'll paraphrase.  Jon asks:

If we literally turned off all this social media / Web 2.0 stuff for a day would business productivity soar?  And inversely, would innovation stumble?

Interesting questions.  What do you think?

While your kneejerk reaction might be "hell no" and "hell yes," (in that order) you might also wonder if maybe, just maybe, you've got it backwards.

I don't know how many of you worked for start-ups in the glory days of Web 1.0.  I once worked for a company that - in addition to all the free sugary snacks you could stomach -  boasted a game room, a bring-your-pets-to-work policy, a half pipe and (right where a normal company might have a giant conference room) a half basketball court.

The argument was that the environment fostered creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and a sense of community among the overworked employees (I was one of those.)  But in practice, we spent an inordinate amount of time skateboarding, shooting hoops and petting our co-workers' dogs (not a euphemism...)  And for those who really did try to keep their heads down and just get some work done, I'd say it was pretty hard to focus when a couple of your fellow cube dwellers were trading free throws just three feet away from your workspace.  We never did find our groove and despite successive seven-figure rounds of VC funding we never did come up with that truly innovative, game changing web service that we all thought we were working towards.

OK - so right Greg, thanks for yet another doomsday cautionary tale from the olden days.  Well, we've learned a lot since then, haven't we?  Maybe.  Probably. 

Or maybe blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Seesmic, Qik, Ustream, Justin, Utterz, Pownce, Second Life or whatever else you count among your poisons are little more than the candy drawer, half pipe, office hours pick-up game or dog park for the social media crowd.

And maybe that's OK - because maybe we really do get enough upside out of our participation in these things to offset the time we put in (just like three hours of basketball per day helped you keep your weight down even though your diet consisted of nothing but free chocolate.) 

But how many of us have calculated the cost of what we're giving up -- including productive work hours (says the guy who is blogging at 10:50 am on a Thursday) and quiet time to actually think about what you can do to make big things happen (says the guy who can't seem to function without a four-tabbed web browser, two instant messengers, email, Skype and ooVoo all running at the same time)?

I have no intention of "turning off" but you know I like to stir the pot. So let's hear your thoughts.

[Photo note: This is purported to be a picture of the first web server, showing the handwritten 'do not turn off' sign - no idea if it is or it isn't but I thought it was a fun image to pair with this post.]

Comments

[Thibaut Thomas]

I think you are comparing two different things : leisure and multitasking. You can't blog and play basketball at the same time, so work and play are two opposites.
But the current situation is different : the news feed coming to your mind is feeding you, feeding us with thoughts, collective intelligence, insights, ideas, inspirations. Call it collective intelligence, wikinomics, social network...
Its disruptive, its serendipity, its the web, its the network society. And its great to think outside our own box, don't you think ?

[jon burg]

Thanks for sharing! As with all things in life, I believe there is art in moderation and beauty in successful delivery.

Conversations in digital social media can serve as a useful base for opening up our minds and gaining outsider perspective.

But unless we are marketing in the conversation, our careers/jobs are reliant upon timely delivery. Everything in moderation. It's may not be fun, it's not flashy, but it's what works for me.

[Chris Grayson]

The difference being, social networking, as the term implies, facilitates "networking". Networking is indeed productive. Shooting hoops on the clock is not.

[Greg Verdino]

I agree with most of your points of course, and I hope you understand that I was literally "stirring the pot" as I sometimes do here just to get people to think about the things that have become almost second nature. Innovation and change sometimes happen that way too. :-)

BUT I don't know that I agree that networking = netWORKING. Speaking from my personal perspective only, I can say for certain that a large portion of my online social activity (not so much on this blog of course, but on Twitter and Facebook at the very least) is anything but work related.

And the funny (or sad) thing is that back in the day, our Web 1.0 management was also rock solid for sure certain that shooting hoops on the clock was, if not in itself productive, a path toward greater overall productivity.

[Daniel Stern]

This is an intriguing post, and am quite thrilled with what Jon Burg has alluded to.

My most innovative and creative ideas occur AFTER I stop focusing on one thing, and before / at the beginning of when I start focusing on another. With social media and web 2.0, its easy to keep filling your mind with new facts & trends... however, after a while it all becomes a drone to me, something that ceases to engage my more creative abilities.

When I break that cycle by clearing my mind and beginning the study of something new, different and exciting, I begin to draw parallels between whatever I was just studying, and the new thing that I have begun studying. So, if I have spent the last six months, or year, studying social media, that will be my reference point, and the parallels that I draw usually shed the most creative, fresh light on both my general knowledge, and my new study.

I am not sure that I have articulated myself as clearly as I would have liked, but I hope my personal experience helps develop part of a framework for thinking about this... because to figure out how to stay fresh and creative is a hell of a task, and something that, as far as I know, doesn't heed much deep thinking.

PS - Some topics of study that have helped me stay fresh when thinking about social media are: psychology, socio-biology, cosmology, economics, history, and a few others.

[Daniel Stern]

I realize now that I didn't complete my thought, or tie it directly to the original post.

So - if one were to turn off web 2.0 stuff for a day, or maybe a week even, my hope is that it would force me to think about different things, and consequently produce more creative & insightful thoughts relating to both social media and whatever new thing I am thinking about.

As far as it being a panacea for lost work productivity, I think people will always find ways to, procrastinate, shirk work, and generally defocus for a bit. As a side note, I dont find any problem with that as there is great value in futzing around... just as long as you don't overdo it. (there was a graet blog post on this somewhere some time ago... I wish I could remember where and when).

[Nathan Snell]

Definitely an interesting pot stir, this one!

I'll see if I can't come at it from a slightly different angle and say that, if we were to just /turn it off/, 2 things may occur.

1) We'd lose the knowledge and experience of "the edge" (kind of obvious).

2) We may increase the amount of innovative or creatives ideas we have.

I say 2 not because I think these web properties are stifling our innovation, so much as they may be suppressing it. That is, I think there is a lot of echo's in the chamber going around. People saying the same stuff about the same things. "Innovation" begins to become more focused (Like on your post on the game changers, cloud computing or mobile? It's the most common discussion) into what other people have said rather than what they haven't said.

At the same time, it's posts like these that stir the pot and ask the questions people may not like to see (and have that knee-jerk reaction to) that I think keep what I said in #2 (should it be accurate) more at bay.

And people use 4 tabs? I thought all browsers were pre-loaded with at least 8 open ;-P

[Mari Smith]

If - hypothetically - all social media was totally inaccessible for one day, business productivity may marginally soar in offices where staff are hanging around virtual water coolers during work time... and also for us solopreneurs who are easily distracted!

But turned off for any longer than that, and I believe productivity would plummet - because we've become attached to our virtual communities and the instant gratification, and useful connections, research, responses, and information they provide.

My entire business is based around relationships and I *need* these social media tools to even function! :)

[Diane Drinkwater]

I like to restrict the time I spend wastefully because I know I have work to do. I can sometimes get to 11 AM before feeling the need for a browse of a forum or a quick facebook. I ignore emails from facebook telling me I've got updates to read and if I spent time I could probably eliminate them. Some days I feel motivated to work but often I can quickly lapse into social mode. Perhaps someone should write a firefox extension to alert you to your social time after 10 minutes.

[Kristin Gorski (KG)]

I think you've got your finger on the pulse of something big here.

Perhaps we, the social media early adopters, are discovering that social media isn't IT --- it might be one way of getting to IT (whatever that IT is), but we haven't arrived. We're still on the path.

I daydream of deleting my Facebook account --- not that I don't want to stay connected to my friends, but I just don't think I'm getting much valuable connection from it. Though joining and friending was thrilling at first...

Recently I had no social media connection for almost a week (family funeral out of the country and no internet connection). When I plugged back in, I realized I hadn't missed any big news in the social media space like Twitter, which really surprised me, though it was very nice to see everyone's smiling (avatar) face when I returned. :-)

But I still feel in my gut that this social media space is important and is a space where great things can and will be created. Let's all keep looking for it. I think one key to this will be figuring out how to minimize the distraction aspect of social media...Kathy Sierra's posts about how Twitter usage destroys our creative ability still haunt me.

[Sonia Simone]

To paraphrase an old anti-war slogan, distracting yourself for productivity is like screwing for chastity.

A certain amount of distraction from work is necessary and healthy. Playing hoops or going to the gym gives you down time, and you need down time. But do not BS yourself that down time is work. Down time is down time.

The problem with social media, IMO, is that so many of us kid ourselves that it's "work" time. Also, that we remain sitting in front of our laptops instead of physically getting up, adjusting our view to the horizon, getting some blood moving in our legs, changing our perspective.

I get a lot of interesting and useful ideas from social media, and I value those. But turning it off for a day or a week isn't going to snatch those ideas out of my head. Getting up and taking a walk, on the other hand, often gives me some smart, workable insights into how to translate the new ideas into action.

For those who truly believe that being connected, Borg-like, 24/7 is essential, I heartily recommend cutting yourself off cold turkey for a day or two. See for yourself what happens. Some of the most deeply wired people I know get a lot out of disconnecting from the hive on a regular basis.