Monday Morning Match is a quick post – maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea – intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.
Turn Up the Radio
Are you old enough to remember listening to the radio? It might have been in the car while you were driving or it could have been on your stereo receiver in your room or dorm. Maybe it was listening to the radio on your alarm clock while getting ready for school or work. What about those memorable evenings, sitting in bed under your sheets like a tent, your transistor radio tuned to the local baseball team’s broadcast, one headphone in your ear while you imagined sitting in the stands watching the game in person?
In the days before digital accuracy, the signal was rarely perfect. Static was part of the process, and on rainy evenings or if the station wasn’t local, the clarity might not be perfect. We listened anyway. As long as the show or music or ballgame was something we wanted to hear, we would put up with the static but as soon as a song that we didn’t care for came on or our team started losing, the static became louder and we ended up changing the channel or turning it off altogether.
How Do You Deal with Static in Your World?
The hisses and pops used to be part of the experience of listening to a vinyl album or a mixed tape we created on our boom boxes but today we expect perfect clarity. Our vinyl albums morphed to CDs and now we have perfect MP3s and music streaming via satellite radio. Technologies like Netflix and Spotify allow us to focus in on the exact channel to which we want to listen. We live in a world of high-definition technology so there is rarely any static in our speakers.
So if technology has eliminated…or at least minimized static, why does it seem there is often more distraction and noise in our daily soundtracks playing in the background of our lives? The news media blares the bad news here and we overhear gossip there. Social media seems like nothing but a stream of our friend’s “Greatest Hits” while we live our lives as a blooper reel. Crackle. Hiss. Hearing…(every) other….(word) in….(a) sentence…
You Have the Power to Change the Channel
This past week, the static was more than I could take. After a contentious general election, both sides of the political aisle were happy and both sides were mad. Hands were raised in victory while fingers were pointed in anger. In the sports world, usually a personal escape, it was no different. “My team/conference is better than your team/conference” and “this player will never help us win so let’s yell for this player” arguments just wore me out. Crackle. Hiss. Hearing…(every) other….(word) in….(a) sentence…
My main social channel of choice is Twitter. I love the fast-paced nature of the micro-blogging site and the ability to follow a variety of people, voices, and stories. Yet sometimes the people I choose to follow for one reason isn’t the subject they like to talk about the most. For that reason, I have started utilizing the “mute” feature on Twitter. When I choose to mute a word, subject or person, I can determine the length of the mute. 24 hours? 7 days? 30 days? Forever?
Muting allows me to silence (or tune out) certain people or even certain words. For now, I’m muting people and words for a week at a time. After that hiatus from the distraction, if I notice it quickly upon its returns, the muting will be longer. If I learn to like the way my station sounds, they just might get silenced forever…and that’s a mighty long time. I could simply unfollow the people who are amplifying the static but that might cause me to miss some of the “songs” I do want to hear.
I must say, in the first few days since using the mute function with some focus and purpose, my experience has been more pleasant.
What is the loudest static in your speakers these days? What’s distracting you from doing your best work every day? Is there a way to hit “mute” or can you simply change the channel?
Start tuning in to the music, message, and mentors that you want on your playlist. That’s a channel worth listening to.