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Improving my life with Google+

After disconnecting from Facebook the other day, I redesigned this blog’s sidebar to the left so that Facebook Likes are no longer an option. Since I’m not active there, there’s no point promoting it…

Instead, I enhanced my Google+ badge, but pointing it to my personal profile on G+ instead of my page. I decided that I’ll be integrating this blog as myself on G+, rather than as a separate page.

This is all about me, personal, raw… and I’m going to keep it that way.

I also spent some time today going through the past month’s activity on my stream and catching up on everyone that’s active, and unfollowing those who aren’t sharing anything of value to me any more.

We all change as we go through our life experiences, and what’s of value to us one day will become of no value at all another day, months or years down the track. Who we are changes over time.

As Doctor Who said to me last night, in the 2013 Christmas Special:

“…times change, and so must I… We all change. When you think about it, we are all different people, all through our lives and that’s okay, that’s good! You’ve gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.”

Doctor_Who

I remember who I used to be, back when some of the people I was following on G+ were of interest to me. But I’m different now, and what I’m interested in reading now is different too.

So some people got dropped, others remained. Interestingly, one of those I unfollowed had over 2 million followers. It made me pause – if they had so many followers, surely they had so much of value? But I took another look through their personal stream and thought, ‘Nope. Not at all.’ And happily unfollowed them.

My stream of updates that I’m seeing is now a lot tidier to me, and a lot more focused on the things that actually interest me.

It’s good to be who I am today.

We all change

My journey in life is also about my changes in life. As I have new experiences, they change me. Every day, in every way, I change, bit by bit.

I endeavour to make sure those changes are positive and worthwhile.

As I say to my wife when she complains about something she wants me to change – will it improve me, or my life, or our relationship? If it doesn’t fit into those parameters, then I don’t see any need for me to make a change that she wants. We’ll talk about it, and work through why such a change is important to her, but I’m not going to change who I am just on a whim, even if it’s my wife’s whim.

If something is not improving me, my life or my relationship with my wife, then I’m not likely to see the value of maintaining it or adopting it into my life.

And the same for social media.

It’s why I left Facebook. It wasn’t making me a better person, and it wasn’t making my life better, and it wasn’t improving my relationship. So why bother with it?

If something is not helping you, then it’s probably hindering you.

Better to remove it from your life to make room for other things that can be more helpful for you.

My interaction with Google+ is helping me improve my life, because it’s giving me a greater audience to provide me with feedback and insight about things that are important to me.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

As someone that wants to improve my writing and my potential audience, Google+ is far better for me than Facebook.

After I quit Facebook, someone asked me, “How does g+ differ from Facebook in the essential time sapping though?” I replied with:

not much, but 1) there’s more quality content on here than on Facebook, and 2) if there’s 3 timewasters in your life, reducing one of them at least gives you back a third more time 🙂

Since then, I’ve worked out that removing Facebook as a time waster has allowed me to focus on G+ as a means of improving my life, in ways that Facebook never can.

I’m happy with that.


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