The Great Irony of Social Velocity
I had a brilliant conversation with Justin Kozuch last evening on Twitter. If you don’t know Justin, you should. Smart, introspective, determined to find more in all of this, just like I am. I really like talking with him because he’s always looking more closely at something, which is a rare and wonderful quality in humans and it delights me when I find it.
We were talking about feeling the need to “push the envelope” more in social conversations. I’ve even said this myself, many times, about needing to step into more uncomfortable territory. But as we were talking, I realized I’d like to amend that statement a bit and refine it some.
We need willingness to embrace discomfort, yes. I stand by that. But we also desperately need to embrace the non-instant nature of having deeper, more complex discussions about the long-ranging impact of all of this stuff. Most especially the impact on people, from corporate cultures to our performance and reward systems and how we approach hiring and teaching our teams. The discussions that yield more questions than they often do clear, direct answers that we can run right out and implement.
The great irony of the speed and immediacy of the web and the velocity of social interactions is that the far-flung implications – the ones that reach to the very (dare I say) soul of a business – are gradual. Difficult. Meandering and messy. They require careful cultivation, a delicate weaving of very concrete things like process with very philosophical things like intent and the emotional drivers behind our businesses and our work.
I’m afraid we’ve confused controversy with progress in some places. I don’t believe that progressive conversation must come with fireworks and heated debate (though it often does, they are not one and the same). The big “bang” is a great impetus for discussion, but it’s only the start.
Maybe what we’re lacking isn’t so much the tolerance for crunchy conversations – a word that Justin has helped me endorse here – but rather the patience and discipline to have them in forums and situations that are longer than 140 characters, that aren’t defined by a witty repost to a blog comment. That are carried out over coffee tables or the length of a bar, or heaven forbid in our own board rooms and communities and team meetings. That take far more than a single session or a clever social network chat.
It’s the endurance of the marathon we’re missing, not necessarily the shakeup of the sprint.
The stuff that’s shifting under our feet is gradual, like the many years of begrudging creak of tectonic plates or the eternally patient shaping of wind erosion. Eventually, though, something gives and shifts, erupts or breaks or quakes.
The discussions surrounding that - both learning to expect it and knowing how to respond in the wake of it – are where our brains and our very best minds will be best spent for the foreseeable future. Those are the hardest of conversations, and the ones that will be most profoundly worthwhile.
The Power of Slow Thinking
I had a bit of an epiphany this last year.
Contentious discussions can be stressful for the best of us. Some people are formally schooled in the art of debate, and I am not one of them, so often I blamed my discomfort in confrontation or extended debate on the fact that I really wasn’t sure how to do it properly.
Even watching debates online between other people makes me cringe. (At some point I realized that it was more because those ended up being mud-slinging, juvenile name calling fests more often than actual discussions or intelligent debates about valuable topics. But I digress.)
I thought something was wrong with me because I didn’t want to dive into the fray and start some kind of argument or throw myself straight into the middle of a heated debate or discussion. It also crept into my personal life, because discussions that were…uncomfortable often led me to be much more upset than the topic itself actually warranted. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.
Then it hit me one day.
Take Back Your Attention
The amount of attention we have to give is finite.
The receipt of attention is earned, both initially to capture it, and continually to keep it. No one is entitled to it, ever.
The online experience you immerse yourself in is, to a large degree, under your control. You can give your attention easily with a click, and add information to the stream you take in. But never forget that you can remove it as easily, and sometimes you absolutely should.
I’m not a fan of the piling-on, lynch mob tactics that seem to be doled out as routine punishment for online misbehavior. I’m also not particularly a fan of the public announcement that you’re no longer a follower of so-and-so. Sometimes I suppose it’s beneficial to let someone know that you see what misbehavior they’re up to, or why they’ve lost your interest. But I think those occasions are few and far between (like, say, gross breaches of ethics or the law), and are much more likely to make us look as much like the jerks we’re trying to “call out”.
By contrast, quiet removal of attention can have several benefits. For your own sake, it’s one less fly in the online ointment to make your experience on the web shaded with unnecessarily upsetting or irritating things. Collectively, we can make an awful lot of impact by simply removing our attention without saying a word. Malicious malcontents and consistent jerkbags without audiences to feed their antics are as useless as a two-legged stool.
There is so much good information on the web. So many good, interesting people with outstanding ideas. So many causes to support. So much to learn and enjoy and entertain you.
Why would you spend one more second of your time – the one non-renewable resource that you always wish you had more of – on someone or something that doesn’t continually remind you why you spend it there?
Now before you give me the bit about having too much homogeny and groupthink in your stream if you only follow people that agree with you…
There’s not one shred of this post that says you should surround yourself with only people that think the way you do. But you can have diversity of thought, even disagreement, that can be unabashedly awesome. Uncomfortable, maybe, but in the way that your muscles hurt so good after a workout. You shouldn’t walk away from anyone or anything repeatedly feeling like garbage. It’s possible to disagree with someone, step way outside your comfort zone, and still have it actually be a rewarding experience.
Your line is almost certainly different than mine, which is fine. But do have one. Respect your own time as you would insist that someone else to respect it. Click unfollow. Unsubscribe. Unfriend. Edit relentlessly, and constantly as your interests and experiences change. Your criteria can evolve, but the ultimate accountability for the quality of your online experience will always be yours alone.
Take back your attention, and allow it to once again be focused in the places that enrich you. If we’re ever to really realize the potential of what the web has brought us, how we continue to bestow and devote our precious attention makes all the difference in the world.
Learn the 7 shifts that will make your business faster, smarter and more social in this straight-shooting, actionable book by Amber Naslund and Jay Baer.