Seth and Dave Are Right

Last night a trackback didn’t make it here. I saw the link in the list at the broken Technorati index. Dave Olson was asking, “Is it getting really noisy in here?” Dave mentioned that Seth feels it too.

On the other hand… it also seems to be getting harder and harder to find original content. Seth Godin noted that yesterday. Too much noise… not enough signal.

Brings up an interesting phenomenon I think. When given too many choices, people often opt out of the whole decision.

I’ve been thinking about the same thing for some time. As I look back at what I’ve been doing my answer seems to be how I always respond to too many voices shouting at the same time.

I’ve backed away to get some perspective. I’ve tried to sort the messages into meaningful chunks. I’ve gone outside. I’ve talked to people who don’t listen. I’ve listened to people who don’t talk at all.

Now I talk to one person at a time and when I do, I talk as softly as I might.

It’s easier to listen to what folks are saying if we don’t shout back to be heard. It’s easier to hear whether their noisy words have meaning when they are away from the crowd. It’s far easier to know whether the crowd’s talking wisdom when we check in with the world on the ground.

Maybe our circle has become too focused on the people inside.

Dave’s blog post ends with “What do you do?”

I finely tune my personal frequency — that value I most admire. I adjust my signal to a low decibel and broadcast my strongest message as clearly and as often I can.

Head, heart, and meaning are important.
Head, heart, and meaning are the keys to life.

What do you do in a world of too much noise?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. I’m checking in the hotel today!