I by no means live an uncomplicated life, but there is one practice I hit on a few years ago that is as simple as it is effective.

Throw away all your socks, and replace them with 10 identical white pairs and 10 identical black pairs. You never have to sort or match socks, and when you’re getting dressed, you just open the sock drawer and grab any two socks of the same color.

Plus, they all wear more or less evenly. So after six months or a year (I haven’t measured accurately), you throw them all away and start again.

Of course this doesn’t work if you’re a sockophile and like to match your socks to your outfit. And yes, it is much more applicable to men than to women. But if you don’t care that much about your hosiery, it works beautifully.

photo by bark

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I started as Social Media Manager at SAS in December, 2008. I had a lot to learn back then, and I still do. On November 5, 2008, I had lunch with my friend Nathan Gilliatt, who, in the 30-some years since we first met, has become pretty knowledgeable about social media himself, and now blogs at The Net-Savvy Executive and Social Media Analysis, is principal of Social Target and publishes valuable social media research including the Guide to Social Media Analysis and Social Media Analysis Platforms for Workgroups.

Over a large sandwich, Nathan gave me a list of things I should know about and people I should follow if I wanted to ramp up my enterprise social media knowledge. I pasted that list into a sticky note on my iGoogle page, and it’s been there ever since. I just looked over it again and decided to post it here. It gives a brief, interesting glimpse of how things have changed in the last 20 months. I’m also not afraid to admit how little I knew about the tools of social media when I took on the job, other than blogging.

We all started somewhere, and we’re all learning.

Here’s a screen shot of the list. I spelled David Churbuck’s name wrong, as well as Pownce. Also, the Alltop link has changed to http://smbc.alltop.com/.

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Twitter digest, week of 2010.07.17

07.24.2010

Just wrote this for the book and cracked myself up: Please, personalize your LinkedIn requests! (post) http://j.mp/c2x1e1 -> Coffee shop noob mistake: sitting in the window in the afternoon. I need wristbands. http://post.ly/njw1 -> If you're bored with Facebook, go change your language preference to "Pirate." -> I think I just finished my half of [...]

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Subaru announces in-car WiFi

07.19.2010

I was just perusing Facebook, as part of my getting-ready-to-write ritual. (It’s also part of my taking-a-break-from-writing ritual and my winding-down-from-writing ritual. Essentially, if it weren’t for Facebook, I could have finished this book in an afternoon.) I came across a link to an article at PCMag.com entitled Suburu Slaps In-Car Wi-Fi into its 2011 [...]

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Please, personalize your LinkedIn requests!

07.18.2010

I’ve been writing like a fiend all weekend, trying to finish my part of The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy. Last night around midnight I finished a particularly thorny section on listening, monitoring, analytics and calculating the ROI of your social media activities. I think I’m feeling a bit punchy, because here’s a [...]

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Twitter digest, week of 2010.07.10

07.17.2010

RT @JasonFalls: My man @cspenn is doing a webinar on 21st century email marketing. Yeah … signing up now. http://ar.gy/04M -> I know it's early still, but has anybody seen any numbers from the @OldSpice campaign other than number of views? -> Could Three Waters Farm, makers of my favorite goat milk soap, become the [...]

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Five key lessons of the Old Spice campaign for enterprise social media marketers

07.17.2010

Last night The Mrs looked over my shoulder at Tweetdeck and said, “Everybody’s talking about Old Spice.” It’s the hottest topic in social media, marketing and advertising right now. Built on the success of the video embedded above, which now has more than 13 million views on YouTube, the integrated social media campaign features shirtless [...]

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Connecting your computer to your TV for streaming video

07.14.2010

This isn’t the kind of thing I normally write about, and this post is far from comprehensive, but I got into a conversation with two colleagues recently about how to connect a computer to a TV and stream your shows without needing a cable box. I wrote them a long email with my experiences, and, [...]

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Social media advice from the Dalai Lama

07.14.2010

Posted via email from David B. Thomas

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Are you thanking your customers, or exploiting them?

07.13.2010

When a telemarketer calls from a company I do business with, I’m more likely to listen to at least the start of their pitch, because I already have a relationship with them and maybe they’re calling with something relevant or important. Companies know that and take advantage of it. A lot of those calls start [...]

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