Why I Will Ignore You in 2012

Entering the new year I once again present some ideas on things I can do differently in 2012 to work, share and play more efficiently.

1.Ignore people/comments/trolls – I enjoy interacting with people on social networks and blogs, I must do a better job at hitting the personal ignore button and ignoring people when they post just to stir things up, while providing no value.  As the saying goes “Do not feed the trolls” I must remember this more in 2012.

2. Stop being a Beta junkie – I am drawn almost like a moth to a flame to any new site, I can only imagine how many different sites/tools I signed up to beta test in 2011.  The reality is there are only so many hours in the day, I need to a better job evaluating the use case for each site and only sign up for the ones that I believe can provide value, and I have time to use.

3. ifttt – you know I am a huge fan of ifttt, but I don’t believe I have really unlocked it’s full potential to automate everyday tasks, and use it to notify me of things I might be manually looking for right now.  I definitely need to take a look at some of my daily/weekly/monthly tasks and figure out where ifttt can help.  I think there is also the potential to consolidate some tasks I am running in other services to ifttt and reduce account clutter.

4.Spend more time with different technology – my day job keeps me up to date on IBM/Lotus products and will continue to do so in 2012.  In my spare time I want to continue to focus on different technologies.  Two areas specifically I want to spend time in is Google Apps, I have 2 domains set up using Google Apps, but there is a lot to explore there and probably more features I can be taking advantage of.  Second is Amazon Web Services, I have documented my experience with Amazon S3 in 2011, I also spent some time with EC2 last year. AWS has a lot more to offer and I would like to find the time, and projects to explore them more in 2012

5. Expand my network – one thing that has become clear to me is that while I certainly have a large social network that does not translate to diversity in interests or geography.  I started in 2011 making better use of Twitter lists, and finding new audiences to share my blog posts with, in order to extend the reach of my network.  I hope to continue this in 2012 and find new people/sources that I can learn from, and at the same time new people that can (hopefully) learn from me.

6. Make better use of WordPress – there were a variety of reasons why I migrated to WordPress in 2010, and overall I am very happy with the move.  One benefit I have not recognized is the use of the web based WordPress editor (much improved in WordPress 3.3) and Mobile tools for blog authoring.  Most of my posts have been authored in Windows Live Writer, with a relatively few posts created in WordPress or one of it’s mobile clients.  It is time to change that and make better use of WordPress and the tools it has to offer and not depend on using a specific machine with Windows Live Writer installed to blog.

There you have it, a few ideas on my plans to work, share and play more efficiently in 2012, do you have any 2012 plans? Feel free to share them in a comment, I am always open to suggestions.

2011 Posts

Why I Won’t Like You in 2011 (published January 5, 2011)

Why I Didn’t Like you in 2011 (published January 4, 2012)