I spent the last week immersed in social media, traveling to Ohio and North Carolina, visiting with old friends and making several new ones. My primary objective was to learn about social media, and I did. I learned plenty. But at the end of the week, as I was missing my family and they were missing me, I realized that the most profound impact on me came not from social media gurus but from a wise and engaging speaker at the SummitUp Social Media Confab in Dayton – a man who spoke about creativity.
Artie Isaac didn’t talk about Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. He didn’t discuss the importance of building relationships and trust in social media or how to build a community. In fact, he didn’t talk about the medium at all (other than to state that the medium is merely the medium, and the message is the message). His concern was with the value, quality and creativity of the message, encouraging us all to cultivate creativity.
He spoke of many ways to cultivate creativity, but of all the valuable insights he shared, nothing made a bigger impact on me than the story he told of what his wife once told him.
You have 24 hours in a day. Ten hours are for sleeping (and all sleep/bedtime-related activities). Three hours are for your family (spouse, children or other primary, cherished relationships in your life). The other 11 hours are yours to spend however you want. But when you get to that 12th hour, don’t ever think you’re not stealing that hour from somewhere – you are. Taking that 12th hour results in failing health, failing marriage or both.
By the end of the week, I began to feel the results of several “12th hours” in my life, and I realized all the enthusiasm for learning more about how things in our world are changing in a Web 2.0 era paled in comparison to the thoughts of what price I pay for taking 12th hours. Once again, I’m reminded that there’s no greater wisdom in our pursuits than balance. Too much of anything is too much. The challenge is to balance all the good, realizing that too much of one good thing could lead to destruction of another. It’s all about balance.
Thank you Artie Isaac for sharing the most valuable message of the week for me. It made an impact.
