12 ways social media are screwing with bad work habits

1. Can’t hide.
   Other person: “Want to talk at 2:00?
   <pause> Me: “No, I’ve got a meeting at 2:00.”  {note: there is no meeting}
   Other person: “OK, how about the same time tomorrow?”
   Me: “Sure, 2:00 tomorrow.”
   (Me, silently: Great. Now I can’t Tweet, update my Facebook status, blog, bookmark, etc. because my every click will show up on FriendFeed and I’m supposed to be in some fictitious 2:00 meeting. And I’ll have to change all my presence indicators….should’ve just had the meeting.)
2. Procrastination becomes visible.
   Links shared throughout the day could be viewed as breadcrumbs on your way in or out of the rabbit hole. Like “Ig Nobel Public Health Prize Goes to Bra That Converts Into Gas Mask. Innovation at its best.
3. Sloppiness has a wider audience.
   Adding a wrong name to that email is a lot easier to take than sending an @reply instead of a DM. (if that’s foreign to you .. an “@reply” on Twitter goes to many people, a direct message (DM) ideally just goes to that one person. Ideally.)
4. New paranoia becomes a caricature of old paranoia.
   Old paranoia might be wondering if “they” are talking about you behind closed doors. Well, you know when you’re on LinkedIn and it says “your profile has been view by 5 people in the last 7 days…see more”? New paranoia means your viewing someone’s profile looking for clues like some stalker or something. It’s much easier just to casually walk by the office several times.
5. Time becomes more of an issue.
   Flight was late? Accident on freeway? Inclement weather? There’s an app for that. And your boss might have it.
6. This type of thing:
   
7. Photographic evidence.
   Can’t opt out of the work happy hour if your “friend” is going to take pics of you doing something entirely more fun and then upload them via twit pic.
8. Short attention span.
   God, grandma…can’t you tell that story in 140 characters already? Or are you going to make it a blog post?
9. Scanning.
   “Yeah, I saw the memo. Didn’t read it though. Why, what’s going on?”
10. Multi-tasking.
    Reminiscent of potheads from the 70s. “Did you read that? What? <pause> “Did you read that?” <insert random factoid>
11. Laziness.
    Someone already said it better than you so why bother. Just improve your search skills and go find it.
12. Bad hair day.
    …because someone will document it in some way to their entire network (and maybe even add a #hashtag).

Tagged as: Social Media