Connection Overwhelm

What are you doing today to stay "plugged in" to the important people in your personal and professional networks? How do you keep up with the important people in your life?

Do you make it habit to check in with them on a regular routine schedule? Do you check in on their latest exploits via their social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Do you calendar in a reminder to yourself to insure that you won't let another six months go by without reaching out and making some sort of contact with them? You should do all of that and then some...but do you. I know I don't.

Listen I'm a very good connector and even I get overwhelmed by life and the lack of time to focus on who I need to be connecting with today. Sure there are tons of people in my various networks that are important to me but staying connected to them is hard work. Especially when there is so much noise in my life especially with all the various ways we can connect;  think Facebook, LinkedIn, Email, Phone, Texting, etc. How can I possible be expected to keep up? Sound familiar?

I had a good friend recently tell me that he feels like just staying connected is a full-time job and since it feels like a job, he refuses to do any of it. He gets so overwhelmed with it all that he simply gives up. His action is no action.

Does he risk losing touch with an important colleague? Probably. Does he run the risk of damaging an otherwise promising relationship? Yep. Will he struggle to find some life lines in a pinch if he really needs them? Most likely. Will he one day look at his network and realize that he doesn't have any real relationships with any of his people? Umm what do you think?

Does he care? Sure he does. But not enough to try to proactively solve his problem. His feeling of being overwhelmness (my word) is makes him want to pull his hair out. So he gives up to inaction and that my friend is where a lot of us are these days.

In a world where technology has made the act of connecting easier than it ever has been, we find people simply overwhelmed and probably worse connectors than they may have been just a few short years ago. It's sad really, all this technology and yet no way to manage and control it so it actually works for you.

If only there was at tool that could help. Guess what...there is, errr will be. And believe it or not, it's almost here and I've had a significant hand in developing it.

How's that for a teaser? Stay tuned.

Ripple On!!!