I've tried for more than a year to figure out Facebook's value in my life, and am finally ready to throw in the towel.

For many, Facebook is an obsession and a major part of their lives. It's a source of incredible entertainment and social interactivity. I take nothing away from them and their enjoyment of the service.

It's also a powerful advertising and brand-building channel, given its wide audience and deep usage patterns.

I just don't like it, and don't use it.

Here are ten reasons why.

10. It's a huge time-suck
I get dizzy just visiting my Facebook page, and I haven't even bothered adding that many friends or applications. There's so much going on, and so much to do. If I start engaging with a fraction of what I see, I've wasted long periods of time with little return. It's completely non-productive time for me.

9. It's incredibly distracting
Just as bad as email. If you want to stay active with Facebook, and have a lot of friends, you have to visit multiple times a day. It will interrupt any prolonged period of productivity or focus on something more important - either at work or elsewhere.

8. It's become non-differentiated
Everyone's doing it, exchanging the same stuff, buying each other the same $1 gifts, giving virtual high-fives and more. When everyone's doing the same things, and interacting the same way with each other, nobody's unique. Nobody's being remarkable. Facebook allows for very little individuality.

7. It's mostly irrelevant
Facebook lets me virtually "drunk dial" a friend. It lets me send them a pixel of a flower. It lets me send someone a digital sucker-punch. It's...irrelevant. Pointless. Maybe I'm too old, and apparently a curmudgeon too. But I don't get the value of these exchanges.

6. I spend enough time online for work
Time on Facebook for me is a lose-lose. I'm either wasting time at work, spending time on Facebook, or spending even more time on the computer when at home. I'm in front of the computer all day as it is, when I'm home, and not working, I want an offline experience - not more hours stuck to a screen.

5. It keeps people from getting out and talking/meeting live
I love the Web as a networking and communication tool. But as a social playground, I think it often goes too far. I'd far prefer to meet friends in the real world, which provides for a much richer, more meaningful interaction and experience. Sure, it takes more time and isn't nearly as efficient. But that misses the point.

4. It's all fake
I worry that too many of our social interactions with each other are now virtual, with very little tangible evidence or momentos. Call me old-school, but my wife and I greatly enjoy the printed photos we have of family gatherings, friends getting together, etc. Not only are they physical reminders of those good times, they're reminders of times we got together offline to enjoy each other's company.

3. It's not very meaningful
There's a quality vs. quantity exchange going on in Facebook that, in my opinion, is taking us in the wrong direction. While it's great that I can "play" with dozens of my friends at once, the quality of those interactions is greatly diminished online. The multi-faceted, rich nature of in-person interactions is completely lost. The memories and impact of those online interactions is incredibly shallow, compared to the richness of being together.

2. It's not at all inclusive
Some of my best friends are not (gasp!) obsessed with the Internet. One of my good friends doesn't even check email very often (can you imagine?!). If I'm relying on Facebook to drive my friendships and social interactions, what happens to these offline friends? Are they left out? Do they not count? Do they diminish in value or importance to me?

1. It will be over soon
I remember when we all had pages on GeoCities. Then we moved on to our blogs. Then MySpace, now Twitter and Facebook. We will move onto something else. And what will we have to show for it?

I hold the team at 1-800-Got-Junk in very high esteem, and their fantastic write-up in today's Wall Street Journal is a further validation of their success.

Said Jane Hodges, the "Cranky Consumer" columnist for the Journal, 1-800-Got-Junk's performance when she tested them:


This is a company on the rise, with a laser-focus on customer service and an incredible operational system internally. They're devotees of Verne Harnish's Rockefeller Habits, which helps them focus the entire company on what's most important to fuel growth.

Learn more about their operational best practices here.

Congratulations guys, keep up the great work.

Hard-working doesn't always translate to productive & successful. Sometimes, laziness is the best path to progress and achievement.

Sound contradictory? For years, productivity and executive impact experts have encouraged us to focus on what's important, not just what's urgent. No less than Peter Drucker, in The Effective Executive, was among the first to note that much of our time as knowledge workers will naturally be pulled into a variety of urgent but not necessarily important time sucks, and that only careful consideration of what's most important in our work - then focusing intently on getting those few things done - is the best path to productivity and success.

So, as Leo points out this week, focusing on just three things each day (rather than the pages and pages of to-do's that most of us carry around) can have an effect both on our productivity and our peace of mind.

Call it lazy if you want, but knowing the night before exactly what needs to get done the next day (just 2-3 important things), then focusing early in the day on getting those things done can have an incredible impact. Give it a try for a week and see what happens.

More on being productive and lazy at the same time from Leo here.


Photo Credit: The Lazy Environmentalist

Today Howard took on the idea, as well as the pros and cons, of free syndicated content. If a publisher offers to promote your white paper for free online, for example, there must be a catch.

That publisher may want to sell you the leads generated from that white paper later, or you may be sacrificing value and ROI from your other lead generation efforts (lower response rates and higher costs from search ads, for example) when prospects find out they can get your information elsewhere without having to register.

But depending on your objectives, that might be OK. Especially with a non-customer and prospect audience, it all comes down to value - what value are you providing, what do they have to give up (if anything) to get it, and what value do you get in exchange for getting that information or service out there.

The first part of that value equation is the simplest. If you don't produce something that others want, you've missed the entire point. Whether you sell it, give it in exchange for a registration, or simply give it away - people have to want it.

Whether or not your audience is willing to give something up (their personal information, an email address, or even money) depends on how much value you've created, and how badly they want it. Some of this is surely in how well you market your offer, but most of the value is baked into the offer itself.

Whether or not you choose to require something from your audience in exchange for that value is entirely up to your end-game. Are you publishing a white paper in order to develop thought leadership, extend awareness of your business, or build credibility for a new product? If that's the case, then you want the white paper in as many hands as possible. Registration, therefore, is probably a bad strategy.

There's no uniform answer to this value exchange. But it is important to fully understand what you want out of the exchange, and whether what you're offering can support that objective. It may not be cut and dry, but lacking clear objectives and success metrics up front will only create greater ambiguity and confusion down the road.

Hat-tip to Howard for the inspiration.

Today in Seattle, a thin blanket of snow and ice covered many of the streets. Local schools were closed, and driving to work was somewhat hazardous.

A year ago, similar conditions swept Seattle, and I wrote about the two-sided opportunity snow days represent for many of us.

The analogy is in obstacles to success we face every day. Sometimes it's a patch of ice between us and the office. Other times it's a new competitor. Or slow market conditions. Or bad press.

How do you react? Are these obstacles used as an excuse, or leveraged as an opportunity?

Read more here.

Innovation is inherently based on taking risks. It typically requires stepping out from what's known, what's comfortable, and instead trying something that very likely could (or will) fail.

The most innovative companies in the world - 3M and Google among others - fail a LOT. They foster an environment with a fundamental understanding that failure is a part of the creative and innovation process.

How could a recession stifle innovation? By creating fear.

Fear that diverting from what's known and comfortable will accentuate the possibility of sinking profits and lost market share. Fear that failure in one's job could lead to layoffs.

Fear can cause people to simply stick to what they know, what's comfortable, what they already understand will generate success - vs. trying something completely different that could result in a breakthrough for themselves, their companies and their customers.

The mere threat of a prolonged economic downturn could cause companies to hunker down, brands to stick to what has always worked in the past (even if it doesn't work anymore), and individuals to stifle their own creativity for fear of sticking out, demonstrating less initial progress, and therefore putting their jobs at risk.

I hope I'm overthinking this, but I've seen it before. Even in the midst of robust economic conditions, companies and brands in vertical industries find themselves in chasms between growth periods, and those chasms too often foster fear, uncertainty and stagnation.

In these conditions, it can be difficult to turn fear into courage. But in our businesses and as individuals within them, that's what we need to do.

I was fascinated to read a couple days ago about the possible split between Sears and their Craftsman tool brand. According to the story, Sears may reorganize into several separate companies, which could include splitting out the Craftsman and Die-Hard brands.

For decades, Craftsman has been synonymous with Sears as a well-regarded line of tools. It's been a steady traffic-driver to a store that has lost significant market share in other departments to "new" brands such as Wal-Mart, Target and others.

I'm very curious to see how this separation will manifest itself for Sears and for the individual brands, and what it will mean to both collective and individual sales. For example:

- Will we see Craftsman tools at Wal-Mart? Will that help sales volume and/or hurt the brand image?
- Will Sears sell other brands? If so, how does that differentiate Sears from Home Depot? Will they compete on price?

Lots of possible angles here.

What do you think - is a separation between Sears and Craftsman a good thing? How will it impact each brand?

Yesterday afternoon, I gave a presentation with minimal slides. In fact, I used just one slide. I might as well have used too many.

Let me qualify.

I'm a fan of eliminating copy-heavy slides from presentations. Too many words, and they're reading - not listening. You might as well hand out a transcript and give them their 20 minutes back.

I've even started wondering just how important PowerPoint is to a presentation in the first place. Why not have great content, delivered in a dynamic way, without any slides, to get the point across? Isn't that what happened before PowerPoint? Didn't people simply orate in a fantastic, memorable way?

That can work. But so can good slides. Not word-filled slides, but example-filled slides.

I gave several examples of work in progress in my presentation yesterday. I talked about them, anyway.

I should have showed samples of this work in the presentation. Not words describing it on the slide, but screen grabs and snapshots of the work itself. Something to bring my words to life, make it pop for the audio and visual learners in the room.

I discussed several anecdotes and metaphorical case study examples from across the Web to prove several points. I used my words to paint a picture, when dynamic visuals of what I was describing could have been more compelling, more attention-grabbing.

I think the presentation went well, but it didn't go great. I went too far in my attempt to avoid the PowerPoint pitfalls that are all to common in corporate presentations these days.

What I learned, ironically, is essentially the same lesson - just from the other end.

Slides with too many words are a distraction. They don't help you tell a story. Presentations with no visuals can sometimes work, but visuals that augment the story, and really bring it to life, can make a good presentation great.

I'm addressing this same group again on tomorrow, and am making significant changes to my visual presentation. We'll see how it goes.

I've been a big fan of the ZenHabits blog for some time. Recently, its author fulfilled a long-held dream by quitting his day job and embarking on a career as a full-time writer.

Flip through his well-written blog and you'll see why this was a very good idea. Leo offers a refreshing voice that combines productivity and work-life balance best practices together in a highly-accessible, practical format.

I also highly-recommend his new eBook, Zen to Done. Well worth the token investment.

I've gotten in the habit of having pen and paper with me nearly everywhere I go, to better capture the ideas that aren't always thoughtful enough to show up when I can do something about them. When I'm mobile and writing something down isn't easy (or safe), I use Jott.com.

Neither are very helpful when exercising. Last weekend, I had a number of good ideas during a great morning run. Unfortunately, I had no way of recording them, so most were lost.

Yesterday, on the same run, I took a small digital voice recorder with me. Merely pressed a button when I had something to say or remember.

I came home with 14 short recordings, some incredibly tactical and some more long-term valuable.

I'd recommend this approach at the gym as well, especially if it's noisy enough that people won't think you're talking to yourself like a crazy person. On the contrary, they just might admire the fact that you're capturing all of the ideas that they routinely lose right back into the Stairmaster.

Still haven't figured out the shower. I think my wife would draw the line at the waterproof whiteboard...