I’ll admit it, I like Twitter. It’s a great tool to keep your fingers on the pulse of what’s going on in the world. While comments range from the inane to the minute details of people’s every day lives, it also is a utility built just for the short attention spans of the 21st century. I’m still weighing the overall impact of getting more news, but it is coming with a small cost. As I’ve come to rely on Twitter as my primary news feed, it also means that I have stopped drilling down into that news. Since my primary interface to Twitter is my unlimited SMS phone, I get a whole days worth of tweets, but rarely follow up on any of the more interesting comments.
However, I’d have to conclude that after relying on Twitter on my cellphone for several months, I believe I’m staying more abreast of what’s going on in the world, of course, that depends heavily on who you follow, and then even more selectively which of those feeds I send to my phone. Like most new technologies, there is a growing encroachment of spam and snake oil peddlers populating Twitter, and their presence is hard to avoid, but there are many people working hard to add value to this global thought stream. One of my favorite aspects of Twiter is the rare nugget that comes through that really causes you to re-evaluate yourself and how you’re conducting your life.
Yesterday was a perfect example of this, when I read the following quote from F. Matthias Alexander, “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” The quote came through the stream by author Johnathan Carroll, who I happened to start following at some point (by the way, I think Twitter could provide much better utilities surrounding the follower – followee relationship, such as when you/they started following, being able to sort by that date, etc.). When I read this quote, it was like a slap up beside my head, telling me to wake up.
In the development of any expertise, there is one essential truth. In order to achieve expertise, one must put in the time. Unless, someone is super-naturally gifted in some endeavor, there is no way to achieve expertise without practice. So after reading Mr. Alexander’s words, it finally sunk in. I had become lackadaisical when it comes to writing. While mastery of my art and cartooning skills remain many years ahead of me, I’ve been writing for well over the 10 years necessary to call myself an expert writer. Now I’ve got to focus my efforts on writing and develop my technological skills (and habits) into publishing what I’ve already written, and capturing the writing that’s spilling out of me to become lost amongst the many notebooks I use to preserve my ideas.
Therefore, this post is a testament to my renewed effort to develop some new habits. Which is to say, not entirely comprehensive enough to recognize the discipline that lies behind establishing and sustaining a habit. New habits are hard to build, but wither and cease to exist with such quickness, that one must always be on guard to ensure that your habits remain in support of your goals.
