Maybe it’s the slower pace of Victoria Day (a holiday Monday in Canada). But I’ve been thinking about timeliness and how we seem to attach a sense of urgency to many things that may not require immediate attention. (That’s to say some attention is necessary, we just don’t have to jump.)
Certainly in communications and client service, we need to be responsive. And with social media’s ability to spread like wildfire (combined with some folks’ lack of judgement), it seems like there’s a mini online issue that must be dealt with every other day.
That’s the new reality. And we accept it.
However, I was catching up on some blog reading this weekend and tweeted about two posts I found to be smart, insightful and well written: Joel Postman’s thoughts on attribution and Gini Dietrich’s take on being a CEO-entrepreneur.
Both were ‘in the archives’, so to speak, in that they had been published in late April/early May. And I noticed I started my tweets – ‘catching up’ – as if I felt I had to explain my sharing delay. But does that lessen the value of the content? Of course not.
It got me thinking that in our world of Twitter-immediacy, we need to make sure we’re not solely focused on timing at the expense of ideas.
Sure, we’ve always paid attention to things that rise to the top (i.e. news). But, there’s a lot of important and useful information that happens to have been written yesterday, last week, last month, last year… etc.
And that content deserves your attention when you happen on it; when it’s most relevant to you.
So time is not of the essence…because I just saw this?? 🙂
I love the thinking behind this. I always feel guilty if I don’t post something immediately. But you’re right – posting later doesn’t de-value the content.
Thanks Gini. I’m actually working on a post about the value of the ‘backlist’ – things we’ve written in the past that are still relevant (and a good read, hopefully). Happy New Year! BTW, you’re the first new comment on the wordpress version of my blog – still in ‘beta’ mode. It needs a bit of a design (this was all me-unfortunately) and a migration to the new URL… My early 2010 project.
Thanks for the mention, Martin. Your blog is always smart and worthwhile. Ironic, Erick, that In Praise of Slowness is a quick read. Thanks for recommending it.
The timing of your blog post is ironic.I just finished a very interesting read by Carl Honore titled “In Praise of Slowness”. It is a quick and interesting read that focuses on “the cult of speed” and how a worldwide movement is changing the way we live.It’s a great read; very relevant to the world of communications.http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676975734