There I was, about to write another post on why I’m not as enamoured with Twitter as I once was (I haveprevious on this). The latest addition would have been prompted by this post on why Twitter still isn’t a social network, and particularly this bit:
[U]nless you’re a power user, someone sharing a unique story or a chance witness to something big, Twitter is essentially a broadcast you’re viewing[.]
[I]f you wanted to keep Twitter fresh for you, you needed to work at it.
And what did we do?
[W]e didn’t.
Dagnammit, he’s right.
For the last two years, it’s me who hasn’t put in the effort I used to with Twitter. The disappointment I have when my timeline isn’t what I want it to be is reminiscent of how I feel when I only get bills through my letterbox or promotional emails in my inbox. But there’s a reason that happens, too: I don’t send letters and only get personal emails if I’ve sent one myself.
So, you see, Twitter – it isn’t you, it’s me.
The issue I now face is that the only time someone says this is when they’re about to break up.
Have we reached a saturation point where every element of HR has now been battered, blogged and tweeted into submission?
Are our attention spans now so short we can’t read anything more than a one paragraph summary without passing judgement and moving on?
Is there simply too much out there that it’s getting harder and harder to find the quality and the different perspective?
Are there too many other ways of getting messages out there now?
Has the move to accessing everything online via phone made it harder to really take things in?
Are people consuming their learning in different ways?
Or, are we just consumed by group think and boring each other senseless?
and an interesting reflection:
Perhaps there is just too much noise and it’s just time for a little more quiet reflection in the HR and business world rather than trying harder to shout above it.
What I think is most interesting, though, is that HRManNZ‘s thoughts are related to a specific area of expertise (i.e. HR). Part of me had been thinking the issues of social media and blogging had been general ones, but his post alerts me to the fact that the problems actually apply just as much – if not more – to specific areas (in my case, that’s primarily social care, health and public service reform, where there is indeed a weekly avalanche of ‘content’).
We can all ponder the question of the future of Twitter and the like. If you’re already personally feeling like you’re not enjoying it much and are looking around for different ways to be, to reflect and to be in touch with interesting people, we may already have our answer.
—
[1] – A man called Rich W who also enjoys cricket. He must be right!
As I’ve said before, social media and the vast majority of mainstream media is a sink on people’s time. Whilst I’ve done a pretty good job over the last 18 months of reducing my news consumption (see how and why), I’ve done much less well on social media, specifically Twitter (I’ve done ok reducing Facebook usage).
It’s a new year, though, so what the heck: let’s give a resolution of sorts a go.
Thus, I’m aiming to use Twitter considerably less over the coming weeks and months. Instead, I’m going to do four things:
Continue to read books (mainly non-fiction). You can see what I’m reading on my Libib library
Do the vast majority of my reading through RSS feeds (Feedly is my reader of choice – remember the good old days of Google Reader?)
Capture what I’m reading and occasional reflections using Pinboard – with links reflected on this site, too. (Remember the good old days of Delicious?)
Finally, I aim to blog more regularly. A few posts will be original writing; most is likely to be reflections, comparisons and capturing themes of the stuff I’ve read above.
I’ll still tweet a bit – probably directing folks to the four things above (plus films I’m watching), but will be trying to limit the time spent on Twitter considerably. To help along the way, I’ve deleted the Twitter app from my phone – let’s see if that helps.
We in the media have spent decades turning the news into a consumer business that’s basically indistinguishable from selling cheeseburgers or video games. You want bigger margins, you just cram the product full of more fat and sugar and violence and wait for your obese, over-stimulated customer to come waddling forth.
ONE evening early this summer, I opened a book and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over, a half dozen times before concluding that it was hopeless to continue. I simply couldn’t marshal the necessary focus.
I was horrified… Instead of reading [books], I was spending too many hours online, checking the traffic numbers for my company’s website, shopping for more colorful socks on Gilt and Rue La La, even though I had more than I needed, and even guiltily clicking through pictures with irresistible headlines such as “Awkward Child Stars Who Grew Up to Be Attractive.”
But even with spending so much time consuming [news and media] I was left none the wiser. I felt like I still didn’t understand what was going on. In my mind I couldn’t answer questions such as: why is what’s happening happening? How and why did we get here? Where are we going? Why are we going here and not there? What can the past tell us about why here may be better than there and what we might be able to learn about the options for getting there?
I had reached a dead end. Or, rather, I had so many choices of which direction to go in that I went nowhere.
provided me with some thoughts as to why I was feeling that way. His argument gives 15 reasons on why news is bad for us, including: news systematically misleads us, news limits our understanding, news massively increases cognitive errors and news inhibits thinking.
It’s an essay and way of thinking I can’t recommend highly enough.
How has it gone? To a large extent I’ve managed to alter my news consumption and instead switched to reading more books (you can see what I’ve been reading on my Libib Library). I occasionally find myself slipping back into old ways, though – especially when it comes to Twitter – and so am hoping to refocus a bit more in order to
pursue the things that interest me and my mind – giving myself chance and space to be curious, to think, to create and to be.
Reading these two articles was a timely reminder of this intent. I’ll let you know how I get on!
Some whales never make it back to the ocean: “The Whale Beached between Scheveningen and Katwijk, with Elegant Sightseers,” by the Dutch painter Esaias van de Velde. (Via The Atlantic and Wikimedia)
A couple of terrific posts about Twitter from the last couple of weeks.
[O]n Twitter, people say things that they think of as ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal political statements by people outside the conversation. Because there’s a kind of sensationalistic value in interpreting someone’s chattiness in partisan terms, tweets “are taken up as magnum opi to be leapt upon and eviscerated, not only by ideological opponents or threatened employers but by in-network peers.”
I have certainly felt a lot less love for Twitter over the last 18 months or so. Taking 4-6 weeks out in 2012 or 2013 would never have been something I’d contemplate; now I consider doing it nearly every time I sign in. By using lists far more and reducing who I follow I am trying to protect what Twitter once was, but I don’t think it will be too long until I use it only sparingly.
As a reminder: the reason for this was because I think it’s useful to know the degree to which something is innovative or whether it is, for example, something that actually replicates practice in another area; or is something that is supposed to be done anyway; or perhaps something using a different mechanism to what is found in other places.
The suggested innovation scale has three axes: Scale (i.e. size), Known and Sector.
To help bring it to life, below are three examples of “innovation” and where I think they might lie respectively within the innovation scale.
Example 1: Using Twitter
This example is included to help orientate people within the innovation scale. Twitter, as a communications tool within public services, is used nearly everywhere (Scale), Known to virtually everyone and is used across all Sectors. Thus, to speak of Twitter as “innovative” in public services would seem, and is, a bit of a nonsense.
Example 2: Personal Budgets
Personal Budgets are very well Known about, especially in adult social care, and the principle of them is starting to be seen in other Sectors of public service, notably health and employment. Nevertheless, the Scale at which Personal Budgets exist still isn’t especially large. In this sense, then, Personal Budgets aren’t innovative; equally, something is happening such that they aren’t being adopted to the extent that it is hoped they would be.
Example 3: Alliance contracting
Alliance contracting is something that is relatively new in public services. It is only happening in a couple of places (Scale) and is relatively unKnown. What’s more, it’s primarily happening only in adult social care Sector at the moment. Thus, according to the suggested innovation scale, alliance contracting is innovative.
These examples hopefully give a flavour of how the innovation scale may be useful. In the next (and final) post on innovation, I’ll share an overall way of thinking about degrees and innovation and how it relates to other forms of change in public service reform.
A couple of weeks ago I posted “No news is good”, which captured my plan to opt out of news, social and other media in order to:
pursue the things that interest me and my mind – giving myself chance and space to be curious, to think, to create and to be.
It was great to have various exchanges with people about the move, and I really would recommend taking the time to read Rolf Dobelli’s original essay (pdf).
A couple of people were interested in the practicalities of what I was going to do instead. This post briefly summarises the things I’ve put in place or am trying to help make my opt out a reality, broadly by media type. It’s not at all a riveting read, but shared in the hope it may be useful to others thinking about this topic.
Spare Slots grid
By far the most important element of my approach is the Spare Slots grid above. This simple grid enables me to make proactive choices about what I might want to do depending on what sort of time slot is available. The things that are in the grid are aligned with things I’m interested in or trying to prioritise – arranged by the 3 headings of Create, Consume and Cardio – including things like writing more or opportunities to read/study.
The time slots are truly ‘spare’ time, i.e. when family time or work responsibilities are done (or as done as they ever can be!).
What the Spare Slots grid does is provide a menu of things that are important to me, and that are an alternative to the default of opening up my laptop/phone, which often leads to “sink” activities.
Twitter
The first and main thing I’m doing with Twitter is to use it according to my Spare Slots grid. This means I spend no more than 15 minutes at a time on it, and so help manage the overall time I spend on it
I tend to focus much more on interaction rather than tweets. So the first and second columns in Tweetdeck are @ replies and Direct Messages, rather than my timeline
I’m being clearer with myself on who I am following/unfollowing and why. Hard as it is, I’m also being a little less English and unfollowing people rather than hesitating over it all the time
Lists are very useful – it enables me to separate specific work people / things and other interests
I use favourites a lot
Another useful trick is to schedule tweets. This means that I can only be on Twitter for 15 minutes but still post stuff over a period of a few hours / days without necessarily having to be on Twitter myself
I use filters, especially with some website links. Thus, I now very, very rarely see Daily Mail or Guardian links (for example) in Twitter
The main tool I use to do all of the above is Tweetdeck. This works best on my laptop, and haven’t yet found the best app to use on my phone that allows me to do as much as I want.
Facebook
I didn’t use Facebook much anyway, which is fortunate because it’s in no way as customisable as Twitter is. The key here appears to be (if you’ll excuse my phrase) “selective vision”. Thus, if I see a picture with text on it, I just don’t read it.
YouTube
YouTube is more customisable than I’d realised, especially using a Chrome Extension that takes a lot of the noise away (some ads, suggested videos etc. – search for “YouTube” in the Chrome Extension Store)
The main thing I do here is use subscriptions to channels
Similarly, I use Watch Later a lot, and this is the landing page I go to when first visiting YouTube.
Feedly (RSS Reader)
I still don’t get why Google discontinued Reader because I find RSS the most effective way of managing sources of information
Feedly is my RSS Reader of choice LINK, which allows me to aggregate all sources of information I’ve chosen. This means I then don’t have to visit those sites and so reduces the possibility of wider distraction
My RSS feeds are categorised and arranged by certain topics
I’ve particularly added blogs / sources of info that explore issues in depth, are high quality or are from sources I trust/respect
Even here, I filter the aggregated information quite quickly by using star item/read later systems.
News
I’ve basically switched it off! I’ve done this in the following ways:
I use a website/URL blocker as a Chrome Extension, which means that, even I have clicked a link, I still can’t see actually see it
I don’t buy newspapers or periodicals
I very rarely watch television. If there is something I’d like to see I use YouTube or, for flims/series etc. I tend to use Netflix (other streaming services are available)
I’m still considering the possibility of a subscription to a quality print periodical. The ones I’m thinking about at the moment are re-subscribing to Prospect or the London Review of Books, but I haven’t done this yet. Good as they may be, I won’t be getting a subscription to something like The Week, New Statesman or The Economist etc.
Personal email
The number of emails I deleted without reading was amazing. If I found myself deleting an email without reading it I would instead unsubscribe from the mailing list if at all possible. This has left me with around six newsletters from organisations I like (for example, Policy Network and Nesta).
Phone
I’ve removed some apps from my phone
I’ve turned off all notifications
I use airplane mode quite a lot (partly a battery problem, and much to the annoyance of my wife. Ever the diplomat, it’s only a matter of time before I get a mobile battery pack and not use airplane mode.).
So, those are most of the practicalities. After a bit of time seeing how it goes, I’ll do an update on what difference this has made, as well as reflections on the bit that I think will be the hardest: balancing all of the above with the responsibilities of work.
Rolf Dobelli’s essay, “Avoid News: towards a healthy news diet” (pdf), has provided me with the final signing post of a journey I’ve been on for the last few months.
In that time, I found I’d grown tired of most sources of media. Their focus seemed only to be on trivial, untrue or highly creative interpretations of things to do with politics and policy, or fanning the flames of these things with news stories and opinion pieces. I’d also grown increasingly tired with social media, the majority of which was people sharing either trivial, untrue or highly creative interpretations of things relating to politics and policy, or sharing a news story or opinion column that had fanned the flames of their outrage. On top of this, I found myself frustrated with the never-ending wealth of blogs, reports, videos and so on which offered organisation x’s perspective on the latest thing y or z.
I was tired, and yet found it difficult to draw myself away from it. As a result, I wasted huge amounts of time consuming news, social media and what x had to say about y or z.
I was checking all of these things when I didn’t have anything better to do.
Actually, I was checking them when I did have better things to do.
But even with spending so much time consuming, to use Short Circuit’s phrase, input, I was left none the wiser. I felt like I still didn’t understand what was going on. In my mind I couldn’t answer questions such as: why is what’s happening happening? How and why did we get here? Where are we going? Why are we going here and not there? What can the past tell us about why here may be better than there and what we might be able to learn about the options for getting there?
I had reached a dead end. Or, rather, I had so many choices of which direction to go in that I went nowhere.
Dobelli’s essay provided me with some thoughts as to why I was feeling that way. His argument gives 15 reasons on why news is bad for us, including: news systematically misleads us, news limits our understanding, news massively increases cognitive errors and news inhibits thinking.
In what is a forceful argument, the line of argument that particularly resonated with me was:
News has no explanatory power. News items are little bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world.
Instead, it:
feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking.
What’s worse, Dobelli notes that as humans we are more inclined to:
swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, like bright-coloured [sweets] for the mind.
As it goes for news, so it goes for social media and all the other brightly-coloured sweets on offer.
To some extent, and with one considerable exception, news, social and other media isn’t at fault; it is simply exploiting pitfalls in our make-up. Dobelli draws a parallel with food that goes beyond just sweets, but his essential argument is that we’re not rational enough to be exposed to the news – a thought that’s entirely reasonable to anyone familiar with Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and the work on heuristics it summarises. What’s worse is that the seeming availability of all this other input doesn’t challenge our thinking. Dobelli quotes Warren Buffet:
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
And so we have become, in Dobelli’s words, shallow thinkers; we can’t differentiate between what’s relevant and what’s new.
The considerable exception I note above is that news can and does shape the public agenda. The lament that politics is now about spin and not substance only captures one side of the problem, because:
Journalism shapes a common picture of the world and a common set of narratives for discussing it. It sets the public agenda. Hold on: do we really want news reported to set the public agenda?
Bringing this all together, it’s no surprise that I was at a dead end. But the question becomes: where do I go from here? At the level of the individual, Dobelli argues we should stop consuming news entirely. Instead we should read books and journals, think and concentrate during uninterrupted time, and “go deep instead of broad”.
These, then, are the things I am doing.
It’s easy to consider this a New Year fad but the timing, I think, is just a coincidence. The process is one that began last year, and is why I refer to Dobelli’s article as the final signing post rather than a first step. In practice, I’m sure it will be harder than I think, and the outcomes of what this means I do do (for example, on social media) and the practicalities of how I’m going about doing it aren’t the point of this post (I may blog on them another time).
The crux is that I’m making a conscious and proactive choice to opt out of the news, social and other media. Instead, I am aiming to pursue the things that interest me and my mind – giving myself chance and space to be curious, to think, to create and to be.
Respect your opponent – “[E]asy targets are typically irrelevant to the real issues at stake and simply waste everybody’s time and patience, even if they give amusement to your supporters. The best antidote I know for this tendency to caricature one’s opponent is a list of rules promulgated many years ago by social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport [on h]ow to compose a successful critical commentary.”
Point six:
Don’t waste your time on rubbish – “Sturgeon’s law is usually expressed thus: 90% of everything is crap… A good moral to draw from this observation is that when you want to criticise a field, a genre, a discipline, an art form …don’t waste your time and ours hooting at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone…
Let’s stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship examples extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs.”
At various times thoughts like this have come across my mind, in much less articulate and much more verbose ways. Each time, I have thought they are particularly relevant to Twitter, since it’s the place where the vast majority of interaction and debate I come across now takes place.
(The only other place I regularly personally encounter debate is at conferences or seminars, usually after the two words that strike fear into any rational being: “Any questions?”)
As Dennett himself notes, points two and six are related: people who use poor methods of argument probably constitute those who primarily engage with or generate 90% of rubbish.
It reminds me of the hierarchy of disagreements: level zero is name-calling and level 2 is ad hominem attacks, whilst level 5 is refutation and level 6 is refutation of the central argument. (I’d hazard that Question Time on Thursdays and Any Questions? on Fridays rarely venture above level 3 (contradiction) and the occasional level 4 (counterargument).)
This runs the risk of being labelled elitist, and to some extent it probably is. But I’d contend that many folks don’t have the time to engage with the chaff / noise / rubbish etc. when there’s so much wheat / signal / good stuff out there, and so there has to be a way of filtering things as you want.
What this personally means for me on Twitter is this (broadly speaking a 1-in-4 rule):
My ratio of following to followers is around 1:4 – this has a natural filtering effect
I consciously look at around 1 in 4 tweets, which…
… reflects the 25% of people I follow who I sense contribute genuinely valuable things.
I haven’t gone so far as to create lists of who is in the “1” and who is in the other “3”, though. That would just be rude.
This is the tenth monthly update about the Strengthening DPULOs Programme. This is also the last update of 2012, so rather than the usual mix of links and stories (which will begin again in January) I thought it would be useful to reflect on where the DPULOs agenda has got to.
There was a detectable shift towards leveling the playing field for different types of providers in public services
There was proof that DPULOs could be clear about the value they add in representing disabled people’s voices locally
The evidence for the difference DPULOs make was starting to come through, and stakeholders were starting to take note.
What we’ve seen over the last 12 months is further evidence for each of the points above. For example:
DPULOs, social enterprises and mutuals are starting to be treated differently – and for the better – in the way public services are commissioned. Liverpool is one good example and we’ll have more in the New Year
There is now significant evidence of the difference the voice of disabled people in their local communities, represented through DPULOs can make. This isn’t just in saving money (though that’s important), but also in the improvements in people’s quality of life. Just look at the evidence here.
There is also now much more evidence than there’s ever been of the unique value DPULOs add when they deliver local services. They increase choice and control. They’re trusted more. They deliver a return on investment. And they save money. The evidence is here.
As a result, there’s been a major shift in thinking: the question I used to be asked all the time was “What is a DPULO?” Now, the question I am asked is “Now I know the difference they can make, how can I get the most out of one in my local area?”
Government has taken note, too: where DPULOs used to be thought of mainly in terms of social care, now they are reflected in several areas of policy:
In the ODI’s Fulfilling Potential documents and Right to Control Trailblazers
In the Home Office’s Hate Crime Action Plan
In the DWP’s drive to increase take up of Access to Work
In the DfE’s new approach to SEN and disability
In DCLG’s Community Budgets work
In the Cabinet Office’s Open Public Services White Paper
Not only this, but the Strengthening DPULOs Programme has provided over £1m of funding through the Facilitation Fund to enhance the sustainability of DPULOs (see here) .
And we’re thinking ahead to the future, too: whilst keeping on with the good stuff we’ve been doing, we’ll be getting new work going in areas such as:
Examples of DPULOs working well with commissioners
DPULOs and Making It Real in social care
DPULOs and local Healthwatch
DPULOs and young disabled people
DPULOs, social media and accessible engagement
DPULOs and fundraising
Mapping the DPULO sector
Further evidence on the return on investment DPULOs deliver.
What about 2013?
Despite all of the positives of 2012, it has of course been an incredibly challenging year. DPULOs have not been immune from this, partly because of the significant challenges that disabled people themselves have faced and will continue to face.
And we know that circumstances facing DPULOs are likely to be just as hard, if not harder, into the future as local government and others also face a tough time.
In a year that will see lots of problems for lots of different people and organisations, what better people and organisations to have working with you than disabled people and Disabled People’s User-Led Organisations?
Over the festive period, I shall reflect on the incredible work that all of you have done through your DPULOs in your local communities, and think forward to what you will continue to achieve in 2013 and beyond.
I hope you have a restful and relaxing holiday.
Rich Watts
(On behalf of all at the Strengthening DPULOs Programme team)
Find out more about the Programme
To find out more about the Strengthening DPULOs Programme, you can visit our website. We also regularly update our Facebook the page with lots of information you will hopefully find useful, plus news from other DPULOs: http://www.facebook.com/dpulos. If you are on Twitter, you can share information and find out more about DPULOs using the hashtag #dpulo. Please also remember to use the #dpulo hashtag if ever you’re tweeting about your work
You can find all 9 of the previous monthly updates here.
Contact us
For information, biographies, contact details and details of the areas covered by each of the DPULO Ambassadors covers, please visit the Ambassadors page.
If you have any questions about the Facilitation Fund or any part Strengthening DPULOs Programme, please contact odi.businessperformance@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
Please feel free to forward this information on to any DPULOs, networks or stakeholders you think might find it interesting.
Two related articles about news and distraction lately.
arbitrary constant 