I was sitting on my couch wondering what to do next. So, I picked up my phone and checked twitter…nope, zero tweets behind. Popped open my email, nope, zero new emails. Popped open Clash Royale, nope, nothing to do there.

…nothing I can think of to do.

…nothing truly, needing done.

…but I am always doing something.

Literally, even when I am sitting wondering what to do next, I am doing just that. I am wondering what to do next is doing something. I will always be doing something. How well will I choose what to do? How well will I choose how to spend my time and not allow twitter, email, or Clash to choose what I do?

If I do not choose what I am doing, someone or something else will choose for me. I will be riding along on the rails of someone or something else.

I need to choose how I spend my time not let myself be told by technology or other people. I choose what fills my time and I choose to spend my time doing something that matters and adds value to me. Or I can decide to fill my time with whatever is close at hand.

Just like the food I eat. I eat what is at hand and what is easy. When all I have around me is junk food. I eat junk food. When all I have around me is quick media and cheap entertainment. I spend all my time on quick media and cheap entertainment.

How do you spend your time? When was the last time you assessed how you spend your time? Where are you choosing to spend your time? Where is someone/something else chasing for you? Who will help you use your time better?

Choosing,

–JT

Someone recently posed the question to me, “What causes your generation to be connected to something?” Essentially, they were trying to figure out how to advertise to me. How to connect to me as a brand or a business.

How do they advertise to me? How do they sell me something? How do they become my resource for sales and purchases?

Simply put, “What do they need to do to sell to the iPhone generation?”

I was a little off put and realized, they needed to connect to me by connecting to me. They needed to tell me a story. They needed to bring me a message worth taking in. They needed to connect me to the story of their brand.

We jokingly talked about how my generation and I could so easily pick up our phone and seemingly tune out a conversation with four or five other people who are all talking.

I pointed out about how picking up our phone was not tuning out a conversation with four or five other people. It was choosing to engage in a conversation with the 300 people on the other end of our story.

While I might be connected to a conversation about the weather, the annoying neighbors, work woes, or the funny thing a pet recently did. As soon as I pick up my phone I have real peoples’ stories to join.

To read.

To watch.

To engage with.

All of a sudden the surface level conversation about the weather is trivial when compared to the content online. The content of seeing a child take their first steps on social media or the content of the guy I know going through a depression and expressing his angst. When I compare the content linking me to the family who donated all of their Christmas gifts to the needy to someone else’s work woes, I find myself more interested in the family making a difference than the same sad story about work woes.

I do not think I am justified to pick up my phone as if I have found the social trump card.

I do think I am expected to be worthwhile in conversation. When I am in a conversation I am leading, it is my job to be worthwhile content. I need to be digging into the conversation and making it worth everyone’s time sitting around the conversation we are having. Is the content I am providing in this conversation more interesting than the weather?

The weather happens to everyone, when is the next time you are going to talk about how you happened to the world around you? When you are in a conversation are you contributing something worthwhile?

Quality Content,

–JT