Refactor your life step 7 — Reach out

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)

It’s been a little while since I’ve returned to this series, but with a few minutes to spare I thought I’d continue on refactoring your digital life. To recap, the steps so far are:

Step 1: Get a better browserStep 2: Explore your mail hosts options and consolidate your mail into fewer accountsStep 3: Update your blog software and templateStep 4: Be consistent and be you!Step 5: Evolve your digital lifeStep 6: Interoperate and connect

What does all this mean? Well if you can’t be bothered re-reading all the posts, my steps towards digital re-factoring are essentially around updating your tools and your on-line identity. Put yourself out there with your best foot forward and don’t be afraid to be you and use the best available tools to make your life easy.At this point, much of what I’ve been suggesting has been internally focussed on streamlining your own identity and resources. With this in place, you’re now ready for step 7; reach out and connect to new people.There is no easy answer to the question “How do I build my online network?”. Ultimately you need to figure out what works for you; still I have a few tips that you can explore.

1. Join Twitter, then use Twitter search. Twitter is an micr-blogging service which is a little confusing until you get the hang of it. If you’re new to Twitter, I recommend that you set-up your account, download Twhirl (a good Twitter client that makes it a bit easier for a newbie user to get their head around Twitter) and start following people. If you don’t know who to follow, then use the twitter search to look for things your interested in, then start joining the conversation; before you know it you’re part of a bigger community and participating in ongoing conversations.
2. Use a service like Technorati to find other bloggers who are writing about things you’re interested in. This can be a challenge (because you’ll be hit by a flood of content) but find a few interesting bloggers and again, join in the conversation by commenting on their blog and providing links back to your own.

Let me know how you’re steps towards re-factoring your own digitial life are going and if there is anything in here of interest.