I’m on Twitter!!! I know, you’re probably asking “what the heck is Twitter?” There’s a really good video on YouTube that will expain it better than I can.

So, as you can see it’s a type of micro-blogging, social networking, media 2.0, type of thingy. The definition is kinda in flux, but basically it’s anything you want it to be.  And it works with your non-Blackberry, non-IPhone cell phone too.  If you can “text” on your mobile phone then you can Tweet. So it’s highly mobile and portable.

The founder of Twitter, Evan Williams started this thingy to answer the question: “Hey, what are you doing?” but it’s taken on a life of its own.  You can do so much with it:

• You can follow famous people on Twitter. No, not their PR people, but actually them.  Mom, you can follow Oprah, that’s OPRAH!!!  Also, you can follow Martha Stuart, Demi Moore, Ellen Degeneres, Soleil Moon Frye Punky Brewster, and a whole bunch more.
• You can track packages on Twitter so that you can stalk those packages that you send up here. It works with FedEx, UPS and the USPS.
• You can also keep your Google Calendar up to date too with Twittercal. It’s a little complicated, but I can help you set it up.
• You can also get notifications from your ToDo list from RememberTheMilk.com.
• Know the location of people who are using Twitter Tweeting by using Twittervision.
• You can also read books.  Yep, read books! There’s a cool service that will read a book to Twitter.
• Also, you can also receive weather forecasts by either following a weather forecaster like Al Roker (@ARoker) or you can use Twitter Forecast.
• There are also a bunch of stuff you can do to promote your business or find a job or drive traffic to your Blog or whatever.  The list just keeps growing and growing.

I know it’s a lot to comprehend right now, but I just wanted to make you aware that I’m now on Twitter

p.s. if you’re looking for some help navigating all those abbreviations and acronyms, there is a comprehensive glossary of  Twitter acronym which can be found here.

Love you,

(http://twitter.com/jmfailla)

I’ve always said that if I knew at 22 what I now know at 42, how my life would be so different. I’m going through some major life changes recently, and I can’t help but notice how differently I’m realizing my experiences this time around. So I thought that I would post some of my thoughts to some of the things that I have learned over the past 20 years reflect on how I’m much more ready to accept these things as I begin to enter my middle life.

John’s 10 Wisdom Points

1. Negativity breeds, well negativity. It is very difficult to get a clear view of circumstances when your vision is clouded by bad things and negative thoughts. There are many people in my life right now that will always view the proverbial glass half empty with the excuse argument that they’re trying to be “realistic.” In order to get positivity in your life you need to be opened to it and accept it. How many people do you know that will receive something positive to only look at its negative qualities?
2. Work to live, don’t live to work. I know that this is more of a Generation X thing than my only personal wisdom, but it’s something I subscribe to. Most Baby-Boomers and pre-World (War II) Generationals would most likely disagree with me, but long are days gone by where workers stay employed for their companies for 30 years. That type of mutual loyalty you just don’t hear about anymore. Follow your passion (even if it changes every 5 years) and money will follow.
3. Enjoy yourself. What’s the sense of working very hard to follow your dreams if you don’t reward or treat yourself once in a while. Have a big slice of cake once in a while. (Apologies to my cardiologist).
4. Don’t stop developing your talents and seeking new ones along the way. Contrary to the old saying: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I believe that your learning in life truly begins when you finish your formal education after college or grad school. Formal education never teaches you how to discover yourself and it most certainly doesn’t address you how you learn. If you want to learn how to play the piano, golf, drawing, dance, etc. and have a desire to do so, then take lessons and truly become how you learn. Are you a visual learner? An auditory learner? A kinesthetic learner? If you’re interested in knowing more, I highly recommend ‘learning’ about Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences or Thomas Armstrong’s 7 Kinds of Smarts.
5. You and only you must be the creator and/or seeker of opportunities. It is a rare that an opportunity finds you. How many people do you know who think that they ‘deserve to get something’ instead of working to get ‘it’ themselves? Take the initiative!
6. Where you are in life does not determine where you can go. But your destiny is your responsibility and no one else’s. You create your own limitations and horizons.
7. The key to more knowledge is directly proportionate to one’s openness. Give everything a chance and be willing to accept criticism -all the time!
8. Failure is awesome – embrace it! THE most important step to one’s success is his failure along the way. Everyone learns by their failures and if you have guts to risk failure, you’ll have the guts to succeed. I don’t know why some of my previous employers rarely acknowledged their failures and promoted learning from them.
9. You can’t do this alone: you need others. This is one I really wished I had taken to heart in the past. I’ve burned some bridges and as a result, it has taken me longer in life to be successful.
10. Count your blessings and be thankful. There are times when things are really bad. You might have financial issues, problems with your children, fights with your parents, a falling out with your boss or your spouse, or whatever. But never forget that there is always someone who has it worse than you.

What words of wisdom do you have to offer? Is there something that I’ve missed? I would really like to hear from you.

The internet is also responsible for what has to be the most used tool for communication in the 21st Century workplace-email. In just two short decades email has gone from a socially interactive way [do you remember AOL???] of sending messages to each other to a modern communication tool that all modern corporations use as a necessity. Even though the internet is at our beck-and-call for instant access to volumes and volumes of information, email needs to be treated differently – or so I think.

Simply put, email is a way for anyone to transmit information directly to anyone else, whenever and from wherever they so choose. And once an email has been delivered, unlike its sender, it is very content to sit in our inbox, waiting patiently to be discovered. When we receive said email, we do what ever we want: trash it, save it, forward it, reply to it, print it up, or respond to it later.

Email has given us the ability to manage our communications in ways that were not possible before, but keep in mind that as the case with new technology we need to be careful that this new technology is not managing us.

Let’s face, we’re bombarded with email nowadays and don’t let me get on another soapbox about spam. I receive more email than I can reasonably process and our continually growing inboxes is a constant reminder of our information management ineptitude. Email overload is a very real problem in peoples’ lives nowadays especially in the office place.

There has been a lot of good discussions, magazine articles, blog articles, news reports, etc. about email productivity, so I thought that I would give you a short idiot’s guide to helping you with managing this problem.

1. Shut-off auto check or set it to a 20 or 30 minute interval. Everyone’s experience working at your computer and focusing on something important only to get a pop-up notification from your email application about an email from your boss asking you a question about your work or a client. Talk about a distraction. Or even worse, when inconsiderate people use the Reply to All button and hold a conversation about a thread. I’m sure if you work for the Hurricane Prevention Center you need real-time emails notifications, but if you don’t, then pace your email checks so you don’t get distracted.
2. Survival of the Quickest Response – if you can respond to an email with a 1-2 line response – a la 30 seconds – then do it immediately. This has nothing to do with filing or being organized. It’s about action and being productive. Get it out of your inbox before it gets on your To Do list. Conversely, avoid falling into a trap of composing a 60 minute email dissertation (read next point) with pictures, graphs and URL links.
3. KISS -Keep It Simple, Stupid – Don’t be so wordy. Your emails are not great works of literature. Keep it short and succinct. Move the email conversation forward by responding quickly with short but straightforward action points. Certainly ask for more information, if necessary, pose a question if it is warranted, or simply say, “Sorry, I don’t know.” Don’t think of emails as published works. This by no means that this is an excuse for bad grammar, slang, an over-abundance of acronyms, incorrect capitalization, or a lack of punctuation unless you really don’t care about how others perceive you.
4. Steal and Cheat – If you find yourself repeating a lot of your email replies use templates to help manage your answers to these frequent email requests. You can create boilerplate responses to these type of questions that you find yourself drafting over and over again.
5. Be true to thine self and don’t be a pack-rat with your emails. If you know, deep down in your heart that you’re never going to need a specific email message, either immediately archive it or just delete it. I remember with my previous employers, that they enacted a 200 mb limit rule on all email accounts. You would have thought that they had taken vacation days away from you. There was such an uproar as a result of people just saving emails in their accounts just because they didn’t want to delete or archive. Your email inbox will be much cleaner and leaner and you will finally be in control of the beast that is email…

Nowadays, voice mail (VM) not unlike email, is just as discoverable in a court of law and needs to have the same importance as signing a legal document.   VMs can be saved, forwarded, distributed and transferred to computers to be burnt to a CD or mp3 file.  So your discretion in VM’s is very important. Never say anything in a VM that can  incriminate you. Nowadays all you need to do is an internet search to find funny and some, not so funny, VMs that were never intended to be on the internet. Never assume that the recipient of your message will be deleting it after listening to it.

Lately, I’ve grown fond of leaving VMs as they standout more than Emails. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I receive on average anywhere between 150 -200 Emails a day that pertain to my job. About only 20% of it is actionable, 50% is informational and 30% is junk/a waste of MS Exchange Server space as well as my time. So if I’m trying to reach someone that is just as busy as I am, and I really want his/her attention, a simple and effective VM is a much more direct way to get their attention.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I hate stupid people when people don’t know how to leave a message.  You know who you are!!!

• RAMBLERS: those who wait to get to the BEEP to then think out loud and never make any sense;
• PLAYGROUNDERS:”Tag! You’re It!”;
• ALZHEIMICS: Those who forget to leave their contact information; or forget why they called you.
• PHONAPHOPICS: Those who have no patience and hang up; then Email me, thinking it will be a faster way to get a hold of me;
• PASSIVE AGGRESSORS: “Hi John, it’s Tom. Call me!”
• ADRENALINE JUNKIES: People who talk way too fast and I cannot understand their message nor their contact information.
• MUMBLERS: The lazy few who do not know that there are over 30 muscles that contribute to speaking clearly and slowly.

For those people, I have no time for them.  I usually will never return their phone call and as a result I have pissed off some of them.  It’s nothing personal, but I don’t have the time to look up their phone number/contact information, decipher their message, prioritize the importance of the call or wait for their Email. And if you want to give me a first good impression, then screwing up a VM is not the way to go about it. And if you are a friend or think you are my friend  an acquaintance, and you don’t value or respect my time or my busy schedule, then don’t be surprised if I don’t return the call.

Now if I don’t know you, please leave more than your name and number. It’s okay to leave me a short explanation of who you are and why I should call you back. Otherwise, your reason for calling isn’t important enough for me to call you back.

Some of my rules, especially when I don’t know you:

• Why you are calling and, if relevant, how you got my contact information.
• Move the communication/”conversation” forward. Let me know what action you expect from me (especially if you are a salesperson). Are you going to call me back, or should I call you? Do you want me to reply to your e-mail?
• Leave your number at the beginning and end of the message. Don’t make me listen to the entire message to get the number to call you back (major pet peeve of mine!)
• Keep it short. I got a 3.5 minute voicemail recently from a recruiter who was, I think, describing a candidate. I really don’t know because I deleted his message mid-way as he was RAMBLING.
• Get your point across quickly and efficiently.

So if you know me and you want to leave me a good voice mail here are some tips and advice on leaving a good voice mail message.

Let me know what you think about voice mail.