Trina Hoefling Untethered

 More and more, opting in to someone’s virtual communication is an invitation to information overload.  Good information, but too much! Further, as technology sophistication lets us automate, online cultural context risks becoming even more transactional.

We have to think and calculate before we engage with one another and with what we create for one another. Do I really want to be in touch with this person or group? Will I read it or just stash it somewhere out of sight? Will I miss something important if I just say NO?

Do you ever look at your inbox and ask yourself how you got so many connections yet have so few REAL conversations?

It doesn’t take much friction to disrupt my social ecology. When I process 300 emails a day (not counting my communities of practice or the JUNK) and become a machine in my activity, I need to wake up! When I realize only 20 – 30 are one-on-one conversations, I wonder about the quality of my time and relationship management. Am I in too far, or just skimming the outskirts of too many communities? I lurk more than I chime in…. What conclusions should I draw from that?

I’m a learning junkie and make no apology. I opt in to more than I can really keep up with, but have opened a world for mysef I would otherwise not experience.

Result? Info overload, more learning to manage, and some serendipitous and wonderful resources and friendships as well. Without resorting to classic time management and strict self controls, how else have you balanced being an open system with a need to set boundaries on your time and commitments?

As much variety as my work  has, at the foundation, I help people expand emotional bandwidth – f2f and virtually. My hope is to contribute my part in expanding emotional bandwidth on the net, in our communities, and in our virtual work. Balancing the information and the clutter is a part of keeping emotional bandwidth going.

Becoming more consciously aware of how I either contribute to expanding emotional bandwidth or to impersonal transactions…. I am doing my part to help facilitate the Internet as a world resource and as a relationship building vehicle. I’d love to be at the center of some great conversations about how to expand emotional bandwidth online without burying ourselves in undifferentiated information!

Not long ago, a stressed entrepreneur got tired of being a permanent small business (by choice and habit) and decided she wanted to build her dream team. Being collaborative by nature, and following her own coaching advice, she decided to weave into her dreams a team of competent go-getters who were also go-givers (www.Burg.com).

Preparing for her dream team and moving her strategy forward, she was balancing tactics like segmenting and updating her contacts with her client work. She poured a second glass of wine (or was it a beer?) in rare celebration of a fully updated, fully backed up database. Shortly after, the computer karma gods pulled the rug out from under her. In a novel you, dear reader, would wade through the painful details. But since this is a real fable, let’s just say it was frustrating to do “everything right” only to have disaster strike anyway. The insurance pays for the rebuild, but the damage is still a setback.

But… in walks Alex. Here’s a guy that, at 4:00 am no where near heading home, chats with me about mindmapping my IT strategy with me when we get through this crisis. I need to be more specific about how I go about manifesting my team members, but wow! It has been the least painful crash I’ve been through. (And believe me, if you know me personally, you know I stood in the wrong line at computer karma camp.)

So… I’ve been silent because the sorting out continues plus I spent last week in Florida at Extreme Business Makeover! There is so much good to share, I’m saving that for another day. For now, let’s just say miracles abound, and if you are an entrepreneur, a network marketer, or have dreams of same, mark your calendar now for next years 3rd Annual Extreme Business Makeover, sponsored by Bob Burg and Thom Scott. (www.extremebusinessmakeover.com) you really must consider it. I’ll tell you why later, but for now, I’m back at the blog (and soon will get that word out! One of the delays that comes with technical disaster and corrupted pst files.).

Work is good, Florida was great, and I got some wonderful family time in while there, too. Hiring myself as my own coach has been a good decision so far!