Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting Part Two

Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting Part Two

Zen and the Art of Twitter is a great read. This is part two.

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from tech companies with neuroscientists, Zen teachers, and others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code ‘Mashable‘ for a discount when registering.

3. Only Add Useful Content

“Do not speak unless you can improve on silence.” — Zen saying

The tools of social media give us countless ways to share content with people across the world. They do very little, however, to ensure that content is useful or purposeful. There is often the belief that to be active and effective on social media one has to post consistently, letting people know throughout the day what we are doing and thinking.

However, just as great music is in part the relationship between sound and silence, we could say that for Twitter and Facebook updates, what matters is not just the content of our posts, but also the amount of space between them. I am sure we all likely follow people on Twitter who may not tweet everyday, but when they do, we are excited to read what they post. It is the quality of their tweets that matters more than the quantity of them.

Lesson: Post not to fill empty space, but to add value.

4. See Differently

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“Look out from the frameless window of a long pause. Let the images come to you rather than chasing outward after them…. If you want to see differently, you’ll have to look differently.” — Ji Aoi Isshi

A key element to Zen is to focus not only what exists in the external world, but to also be attentive to the internal lens from which we view it. If a cup is filled half way with water, one person could see it as half empty, another as half full. The cup, however, is what it is.

In the same way, we can have a million followers on Twitter, then look at Ashton Kutcher who has over 4 million, and think, “I am way behind” and approach the service with the desire to “catch up.” Or we can have 20 followers, and think, “Cool, twenty people want to read my tweets,” and engage with Twitter from a positive state of mind. The number of followers we have often has little to do with the positive or negative attitude with which we approach the service. What matters is less about our number of followers, and much more about how we “see” or “look” — the mental approach we take.

Lesson: Focus more on the mental approach you take, and less on comparing yourself with others.

Conclusion

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Of course we are going to use social media, but the real challenge is doing so effectively. There is an old Zen story about a man riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Seeing him, a woman asks, “Where are you going in such a hurry?” To which the man replies, “I have no idea. Ask the horse!” There are likely days that if someone asked us what we were doing, we might reply, “I have no idea. Ask Twitter and Facebook!”

When we let the horse, or social media, direct us, we get overwhelmed and unfocused, and our time is not spent well.

Twitter and Facebook are incredible tools, but making the most of our time on them requires paying attention to the mental approach we take. When we engage them with a beginner’s mind, a desire to give, a focus on adding useful content, and a positive state of mind, we will likely have more days guiding the horse than the opposite.

To your great success

Laura and her Angel Kitties