Noising vs. Thinking vs. Executing

For me the most attractive thing about working in this sweet scented many-petalled flower of the internet plus culture plus business plus everything else is the bees that gather, drawn in inexorably, unstoppably, magnetised by an invisible something.

It's the people, stupid :)

And the people are the most amazing I've ever spent time with.
From across industries. From across national boundaries.
I've met and keep meeting sah-weeeeet people through this Internet thing.

Fortunately we're different enough to not be a bunch of bland, beige generic robots, but there's some shared stuff:

• A love of the new (clearly)
• An associated openness and optimism
• Willingness to get stuck in
• Social conscience too

It's an attitude.
Hunkydory.

What I'm interested to see now, as the tribe grows in strength, size and gelledness, is what we can do together...

To achieve anything I sorta wonder what % of our collective time and energy is distributed across three different time-buckets: Noising, Thinking & Executing at the moment.

Noising -
Noising is the art of making noise.
It's the echoing of the echo chamber - the embellishing and amplifying of someone else's thought or message. Noising is usually higher quantity, lower quality.
It's the continuous partial attention-powered chitter-chatter on Twitter, the blogging, the unconferencing, the making of NOISE.

Thinking -
Thinking is what is says on the tin.
It's quiet time considering, reflecting and generating high quality thoughts, insights and ideas.
It is reinterpreting existing thoughts and concepts - nothing is new, as they say, but it's an attempt to move things forward.
Thinking doesn't 'do' in the operational sense, other than generating and documenting.
Thinking can be collaborative or independently done, and can include workshops, high quality conversations and dialogue, brainstorming and writing.

Executing -
Executing is getting things done.
It is the starting the company to exploit the thought or technology or market opportunity.
Executing leads to startups, working groups, new code, new stuff, new connections, teams, revenues.
Executing is concerned only with what gets done, with results and with real-world achievements and milestones.

So where does all of this leave us, as I like to ask?

• I wonder how your time splits out?
• I wonder how mine splits out?
• I wonder how the A-list split out between these groups?
• I wonder if there's an optimal blend for an individual?
• Or whether given personality types and natural strengths and weaknesess a better unit for judging the optimal blend is a team or a network - e.g. how much noise vs. think vs. executing do we need in the ideal project team (a network)?

And in a roundabout way what I'm also saying here, implicitly, is that I believe we spend too much time Noising and chasing breaking non-news and the latest social media handbag (today: Cuil, tomorrow: Crudola), and nowhere near enough time Executing.

Ratings and reviews are considered pedestrian by us strident web types - so why haven't we driven forward services and hubs exposing industries and worlds to this disruptive, brilliant innovation?

Online social networks are like SO 1990s for us - we're into microblogging and mobile social networks - but what about the company selling online social networks for vertical industries for gazillions, where did they spend their time - Noising or Thinking then Executing?

I think our personal characteristics mean we move on too quickly, bored by something as soon as we have a handle on it (I think I'm writing about me here), but too quickly to actually give something back to the world - to see how to broker the new new in a way that provides value to normal people.

Maybe a more powerful loop than constantly learning and updating every day would be getting very deep into a pocket and then exploiting and applying that knowledge for the next 6 months - 2 years, and then starting the loop again? Developing towering epic impactful tools and resources each time, whilst our lacklustre buddies are impeccably up to date on the feature set of the latest latest and still treading water, despite brains crammed with value?

Are we applying what we have to give?
Or are we continually topping it up in 0.5% increments?

Who are the Noisers, Thinkers and Executors?
What are you best at?
How can you leverage and exploit what you already have?

...impact, results, real-world change. Execution is begging you to join her.

Comments

[Drew B]

Genius. Love the three types of stuff Will. I'm now, on my way home, going to 'noise' a post on to my blog about how I split my time.

[Will McInnes]

Thanks Drew.

[Chris Reed]

On the money, sir, on the money.

Chimes with a few thoughts of mine (have posted a couple of times) re twitticising: live-twitter/criticising a speaker at an event, rather than taking in the event as a whole before putting pen to paper/digit to keyboard.

Sometimes it's better if the feedback loop isn't instant. Just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should. I think that's one of the distinctions between noise and thought (above) isn't it?

[Paul Stallard]

Great blog Will. We are running a time management course internally next week with some of our execs and I think I will bring up the topics you have covered here as an excellent conversation starter.

[Pete Burden]

Lovely post Will. Anything that increases our awareness of how we spend our time is a very good thing. Oscar Wilde: “I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”

[Michael Rose]

Interesting breakdown, thanks Will.

I've just installed Rescue Time[1] and was wondering how best to tag every site. Rather than waste time tagging I think I'll just use the three you recommend and see what comes up... interesting to see how it'll breaks down while I'm at my desk.

[1] http://www.rescuetime.com

[Richard Millington]

Easily one of the better blog posts of recent weeks. I'm reminded of something Clay Shirkey said. Great things begin to happen once the technology behind them gets boring. Clay uses the story of his dad, who picked his mum up for a date, bought oysters, she puked in his car, and he had to drive her to the hospital and then apologise to his brother from whom he had borrowed the car.

Not a single part of that story is about the internal combustion engine.

It's a great thing I think. The internet has only recently become boring, and that's when social networks and everything began to develop. I think we're on the cusp of something big, right now. A major breakthrough, but we just can't see what it is yet.

I love the 3 types of activities too.

[Will McInnes]

Ah, Richard - a marvellous addition to the conversation, thank you. So right, so right. I love the fact that the technology is (I hope) becoming boring, and ideally invisible. Like you, I hope for this cusp to roll into a huge breaker of a wave of new innovations that develop on these invisible tech building blocks. Yay-er.

[Phil Campbell]

Finely Tuned Machines we are becoming! - oh hai! - nicely broken down, packaged and resold with 50 pence off. I like that. thank you. cheers for the follow on twitter.

I think i fit into all of those mentioned. :)