You, Me, Multiplied

Ever feel like you’re living nine lives in parallel worlds? Sometimes, I do.

We get up in the morning, drink our breakfast, run to work, attend five or more meetings, watch a movie with friends, hang out with family, and maybe, read a book before going to bed.

And then, as if we’re not busy enough in the physical world, we log on and recreate our lives (sometimes over and over) in cyberspace. We build farms or hang out in cafes with friends at Facebook. We participate in forums with fellow professionals at LinkedIn. At times, we go shopping at Amazon.com, transfer funds to e-banks, surf at Google.com or trade merchandise in Multiply. Like savvy post grads, we take up courses at e-Cornell. We write about our lives in Blogspot and broadcast our moments-per-minute on Twitter.

Sometimes, we duplicate our lives online, as if afraid that by failing to do so, people will forget about us. Consider today’s social evolution -- We have dinner with friends and yet, instead of conversing with each other, we spend half the time tweeting to the world that we are, in fact, having dinner with friends. What’s more, we visit beautiful places and, without even a moment to say grace or reflect upon the gift before us, we take out our digital cameras and pose for multiple shots, just so we can go home right away and post all of it on Facebook, Flickr, Multiply, tumblr, etc. It seems that all aspects of our lives, from the amazing to the mundane, are now being copied or multiplied. Patiently, diligently.

Sometimes I wonder, do we recreate ourselves through different platforms in a not-so-secret bid for, um, world domination? Or could it be we’re just fulfilling that ancient mandate mapped in our genes to “Go forth and multiply”?

With so many opportunities brought by technology, surely, it’s a wonderful time to be alive. But then, with the wealth of options in our hands, don’t you just feel we’re also spreading ourselves too thin?

How do we manage multiple lives without being divided? At the risk of sounding uncool, should we be worried that we have more friends online than in the physical world? With the way we spend our time, are we becoming more digital than real?

In the movie Multiplicity, the lead character Doug Kinney (played by Michael Keaton) cloned himself (twice) to help manage the stressful aspects of his life. Overplaying his hand, eventually, he found himself -- and copies of him-- in hot water. Of course, his circumstance and reasons may be far more complicated than ours, but if we’re not careful, we might just end up with a similar fate – with diluted, unauthentic versions of ourselves.

How then do we move forward without being overwhelmed with technology and TMI (Too Much Information or Too Many I(s))? How do we navigate the pieces of us scattered in this world and cyberspace and shine a light on who we really are?

The trick, they say, is to take a holistic view of our digital and physical self. While we may exist in different spaces, people basically still need to feel whole. We can start by finding the bonds that already exist and focusing on them until they define us.

I have also learned from fellow netizens that by following some basic life principles, we might just find the way to managing a mindful digital life.

The first principle, I believe, is authenticity, that is, being true to our selves. If we do not know yet who we are or who we want to be, naturally, it would be quite difficult to connect the pieces of us through space. Wherever we are, let’s strive to bring out the best versions of us. So as not to confuse ourselves, I always recommend we take ownership of our own names. Rather than create a whole new you, create the best you. That way, you build a solid Avatar. Choose the traits you like about yourself and exemplify them online. Then, let’s be mindful of the friends we keep. Birds of the same feather, after all, tweet together. Ultimately, we become like the people we follow or surround ourselves with online and offline. Fellow tweeter @paiawonka drives the point in less than 140 characters, “We should strive to be authentic wherever we are, whoever we're with. Difficult, but doable.”

Second principle is to plant or establish our roots. I like the way a digital zen guru (zenhabits.net) puts it: construct your digital home, then set up essential embassies. What does that mean? First, we set up a simple website that tells the story of us (using our real names), and then we use social networks to build our embassies. To quote, “If my personal website is my digital home, then my social networking profiles on Facebook and Twitter, etc. are my embassies. Embassies exist to maintain relationships with “distant lands” and to act as an outpost for people who want to connect outside my home base, not rule my life by commanding my attention.”

Third principle is Spring Cleaning -at least once or twice a year. We organize what works for us and then trash the rest. Delete old profiles, junk spam, block noisy e-blasts, deactivate unused accounts. If you have archived stories that are no longer true of your present, click delete. Keep networks that make sense or that serve you. This way, we have more time to evolve, test new platforms, and reinvent ourselves.

Fourth principle is to flow like water. Keep it fresh. Be flexible and find new paths. Make use of free apps to simplify and save time. Subscribe to Google Alerts, that way you don’t waste time searching the web, you let information come to you. Spread your reach without eating too much time through Twitterfeed. By updating your account settings, you can easily syndicate content to your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other accounts with just one action. Keeping a Social Media Directory on your main site also helps. It’s a great way to keep viewers in the loop.

Ultimately, managing our lives becomes less stressful once we understand that although we operate in different spaces – multiplying across digital and physical realms—essentially, we all go back to The One.

--SunStar Weekend, October 1, 2011