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In order to truly understand the nature of the Melancholy you must be familiar with the speech of Arestophanes from Plato’s Symposium.

The original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three n number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, of which the name survives but nothing else. Once it was a distinct kind, with a bodily shape and a name of its own, constituted by the union of the male and the female: but now only the word ‘androgynous’ is preserved and that as a term of reproach.

Terrible was their might and strength and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephilates who, as Homer says, attempted to scale heaven, and wold have laid hands upon the gods.

So, Zues smote them asunder. Well, of-course those that were singularly male and singularly female died from the wounds right away. But, those which were initially composed of the best of both were strong enough to survive. But, because they were rent apart, they spent the remainder of their existence seeking out that perfect opposite part which would complete them. And such is the origin of the Melancholy. Doomed to ever seek out the one with whom they may achieve perfect intimacy.

Yes, I know I ruthlessly butchered a perfectly beautiful poem. But, hey considering my pathetic understanding of the collected musing of Plato I think I made the point.

Intimacy is the most compelling desire of a true Melancholy. Many, like the split-aparts, will spend their entire lives on a quest for those they believe will be their soul mates.

Because of this the potential Social Media is ever more tantalizing to the Melancholy. They are thoughtful enough to realize that this medium exponentially increases their chances to come into contact with the symbiotic other they are ever seeking.

However, they choose to explore social media in a manner that many do not even consider to be a portion of the spectrum. You will most often find your Melancholies involved in the entertainment realm of social media. They are the role playing gamers who spend hours developing connections with bands of virtual adventurers to overthrow some evil overlord. They will garner millions of points on Pogo as they share of themselves with other online gamers the revealed insecurities of their souls.

To effectively capitalize on the benefits of social media the Melancholy must view it as a mythic adventure designed to bring together those who are destined to connect.

Original article in the series.

If there ever was an arranged marriage that seemed ideally suited it would appear to be Sanguines and Social Media. But, you know, it’s not as perfect as it sounds. Once you get beyond the titles the divergence makes sense too.

Sanguines are all about interacting with people on an up close and personal basis. They need to see your face and touch your hand. They have an underlying compulsion to be with living breathing, carbon based life forms. Now juxtapose that with Social Media. By the very nature (at least at first) Social Media is technology based. You must spend a considerable amount of time building a virtual reality of jungle vine connections. Then you must employ your very best Tarzan/Jane skill set to navigate the highways of the canopy to reach your connection destinations.

You can see how the medium would be a struggle for the sanguine at the early levels of development.

If a Sanguine is to be successful with a Social Media platform it must have one indispensable component. It must be FUN.

No matter what the ultimate pay out of the work investment in building a network, if there is no immediate entertainment value the Sanguine is not interested.

With this information you can see how Sanguines would be more drawn to FaceBook, Flickr, and Showhype than to LinkedIn which is more for professionals who are looking for networking opportunities.

Original article in the series.

I’ve worked on several projects that have been connected in some way to Dr. Ghungsho Zhang. Most of the work has taken the form of his identification of a trend indicated in a numerical analysis and my development of a program to enhance or accommodate for that trend. For example, Dr. Zhang unidentified an over representation of males in discipline referrals and special education referrals in North Carolina. As a result, I developed a series of trainings for teachers which explored how male and female students have natural conduct differences that cannot be addressed in the same ways.

What does that have to do with temperament and social media?

Just this, just because something can be easily measured doesn’t mean it is important. For example, it was easy to measure the cycles of the moon (sunspots, comet proximity, tides, favorite ice cream flavors, etc) when incidents of misbehavior occur but that doesn’t mean the two are connected in any real way.

Again, so what?

That brings us to the numbers of Social Media. It is easy to measure (or at least estimate) the number of users of social media but without knowing the underlying temperament of those measured we will not understand the nature of their use of the medium.

Here are some of the numbers based on a study conducted by Raplief .

Bebo 5,806,867 members
” Bebo is a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment.”

Blackplanet 1,201,687 members
” BlackPlanet.com is your place to meet and connect with African Americans around the country.”

Classmates 3,051,761 members
“Find a friend or high school alumni from more than 40 million members in over 200000 affiliations at Classmates.com.”

Facebook 5,920,236 members
“An online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.”

Flickr 2,068,097 members
“Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.”

Flixter 17,647,399 members
” Flixster is a community for movie fans of all shapes and sizes.”

Friendster 5,260,380 members
“Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them.”

Hi5 14,679,615 members
“hi5 helps its members stay connected with friends, family and others that are important to them in a simple, fun and safe online environment.”

LinkedIn 841,209 members
“Our mission is to help you be more effective in your daily work and open doors to opportunities using the professional relationships you already have.”

Multiply 1,354,647 members
“Multiply gives you an easy way to share all kinds of digital media, including photos, blogs, videos, music and more, all in one convenient place: your own personal web site.”

MySpace 31,845,954 members
“Create a community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends!”

MyYearbook 2,449,251 members
Offers quizzes and a weblog section, as well as videos and free content from CliffsNotes.”

Perfspot 1,159,539 members
“Secure your personal privacy. Find old friends. Have unlimited uploads and much more. For more information, visit us online”

Ringo 9,770,151 members
“Photo and Video Sharing Made Easy”  As you can see Social Media evolves and devolves FAST! Between the time I drafted this article in June and July 6 Ringo went off-line.

Tickle 6,481,601 members
“Tickle is the leading interpersonal media company, providing self-discovery, and social networking services to more than 17 million active members in its community worldwide.”

In each provider the lion’s share of the users are between the ages of 17 and 35. With the major exception being LinkedIn which has is greatest percentage (nearly 25%) of members in the 35-44 year old age bracket.

Still, so what? If you don’t know how these people are using social media to help meet their needs for control, inclusion and affection you really don’t know what is going on here.

Tori Deaux and I are going to try and use this series of articles to explore that concept.

Original article in the series.

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Social Media is a current hot topic just about everywhere. People are scrambling to “join the conversations” on the various services, but also finding themselves frustrated (see Tori’s article “Why I suck at social media…” )

One aspect of that widespread frustration can be explained through personality temperaments (for an overview, check out this interactive graphic from MindTweaks, or this text overview here on Elemental Truths)

Each temperament and combination of has a different approach to technology, different needs when it comes to socialization.

Extroverts are happy to seek out new friends and contacts, while introverts are more hesitant, preferring to just observe, or to let others come to them.Some temperaments are quick to embrace change, while others prefer more familiar, consistent, and proven technologies. Privacy is also a personality driven issue, as some temperaments need to feel safe and protected, in order to participate in a social environment, while others would be happy with their own posse of cyber paparazzi. Also important is the level of control people have over their use of the service, including visibility, profiles, spam, and so on. We all use the services for different reasons, too - many of them related to temperaments: find customers, build a network of new friends, stay in touch with existing friends, share and inspire creativity, get and provide answers to questions, or just be generally social with strangers.

The frustration appears because most of the latest, greatest social technologies only address the needs of *some* of the temperament types, and make others distinctly uncomfortable, or even anxious. So being successful at social media means knowing which services are best suited to our individual personality, and how to participate comfortably even on services that aren’t well suited to our specific temperaments - otherwise, we run the risk of losing touch with our existing social circles made up of a variety of personalities, and winding up only with friends and contacts in a limited range of temperament - which is not a good thing. The best and most effective social groups (for any purpose) are made up of a variety of personality types.

It’s worth noting that while the older forms of social media (message boards, chat rooms, and instant messaging services) didn’t provide the networking or portability benefits of Web2.0 applications like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, they did better provide a comfortable space for *all* of the personality types. Hopefully the new services will resolve the conflicts in time - meanwhile, we’ll have to find our own solutions.

So over the next week Reg and I will be exploring the topic of temperament and social media, considering the pros and cons of each service for each personality, from Supine to Melancholy, as well as offering advice on how the various personalities can best use the services for our advantage. We’ll be posting a series of interlinked articles addressing the issue on MindTweaks and Elemental Truths, but you’ll also be able to come back here, and find a listing of all of the links.

We’re hoping the result will be fun, useful, creative, productive, and reduce frustration levels. And *that* should cover just about all of the personality types!

This is a checklist I (Reg) came up with that will give you a fair overview of what YOUR TEMPERAMENT might be.

Other articles in this series.

• Temperaments and Social Media - ET
• Interactive Temperament Graphic -MT
• Social Media and The 5 Temperaments - MT
• In Social Media Measurable Doesn’t Equal Important - ET
• Supines and Social Media - ET
• Surviving Social Media:The Supine Struggle - MT
• Sanguines and Social Media - ET
• The Social Butterfly Meets Social Technology: The Challenges for Sanguines - MT
• Melancholies and Social Media - ET
• In Search of Intimacy: The Melancholy and Social Media - MT
• Phlegmatics and Social Media - ET
• Qietly Participatory: The Phlegmatic and Social Media - MT
• Cholerics and Social Media - ET
• Control and Conquer!: The Choleric and Social Media - MT

Open Source social media platforms we won’t address in depth (in no particular order). By the way, open source just means that you can read the programming code, change the code, modify the code and redistribute the code, usually free of charge.

• spree
• iSocial
• Mahara
• Yogurt
• VMukti
• The PeopleAggregator
• Appleseed
• Mugshot Project
• GetBoo
• Akarru
• Scuttle
• SemanticScuttle
• AROUNDMe
• Clonesumating
• BeWelcome Rox
• ICEcore
• Memephage
• InteractOLE
• Elgg
• CommunityNews
• OpenPNE
• MonkeyChow
• NewsCloud
• Feed Me Links
• WorldSpace
• Social Networking POC
• Zoints
• earth-life-simulation
• PHPizabi
• OzcodeOzcode
• TallStreet
• Jamss
• Dolphin
• Ospo
• AstroSPACES
• FlightFeather
• SNOSS
• OpenSocialNetwork
• S3B
• Facelift

One of our shortfalls as a species is that we are ever comparing ourselves to others. We carry a sort of mental tally board around in our heads and all day long we keep score.

My car is nicer than his.
Her kids are taller than mine.
Our lawn looks better than theirs.
I wonder if she makes more money than me?

It is enough to make a person crazy.

So, why do we do it? Simple, we are the product of a society of liars. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it is true. And the worst offenders are those closest to us.

Don’t believe me? Alright, I’ll prove it.

Here are some of the most common things people lie about (gender specific).
Their age (women).
Their weight (men and women).
Their height (men).
Their salary (men).
Their love-life (men and women).

Here are some specific lies people tell (gender specific).
I’m sorry (men in an attempt to move on).
I’m not married (men).
I’m leaving the office right now (men).
I have a boyfriend (women).
You are the only man for me (women).
I’m not angry (women).

Now for the part that will put you in therapy.

You’re a new parent who hasn’t slept all night since the baby came home six weeks ago.
Your “friends” say, “Our baby slept through the night the first night home from the hospital.”

Your mental score card says, you must be a bad parent or there is something wrong with your kid.

You start a blog complete with pay per click ads. The first three months you only make about $30.00. Your “friend” says, “I made $300.00 from my site the first month and its only gone up from there.”

Your mental score card kicks in. You must be a bad writer and should quit trying to fool yourself.

You put in 5 years into a career and the guy who started with you makes VP and you don’t.

Your mental score card says, “obviously, you don’t have leadership ability, or the position would have been yours.”

What is the answer? How can you save your sanity?

First, you should really consider not associating with people who make you feel bad about yourself (moms don’t count).

Second, measure your success based on YOUR progress not someone else’s.

Third, have enough sense to know when people are lying to you. NOBODY has a baby that let them sleep through the night.

No matter how careful you are with your selection of a career path you may at some point find that you are no longer happy with your work. Often this has nothing to do with how you feel about the actual job you signed on to do. In our ever evolving workplace leadership changes on a very regular basis. And every new leader who comes to an organization feels compelled to leave his or her mark.

Nearly every day I run into someone who is thoroughly disgusted with their job situation. I call it the Willie Loman syndrome.

This can be a temporary setback due to high stress, overwork or burnout.

The circumstances can also be so severe the individual requires a complete career change. Sometimes the only solution they see lies in the autonomy of entrepreneurship.

In these situations I recommend the following questions for self assessment.

1. What do you like to do?
2. What are your interests and hobbies?
3. What are your areas of expertise?
4. Do you have any special skills?
5. What industry are you most interested in?
6. What are your financial needs?
7. How much financial risk are you will to expose yourself to?
8. Would you be more comfortable operating a small business with a few employees or a large business with many employees?
9. How many years do you want to work?
10. Will your current physical condition withstand the pressures and stress associated with starting a business?
11. Where will you live and work?
12. How many hours per week are you willing to work?

The key is to takes the results of your desires assessment and match them to a compatible business venture.

1. Provide a continual rehash of topics that have met with moderate previous success. This will help to retard the natural evolution of the local economy of your writing.
2. Migrate all opportunities for input to locations distant from the community or readers you have established.
3. Siphon off any gifted community commenter leaders by blocking those who don’t espouse your specific point of view. 
4. Train resident readers to rely on you for leadership and guidance rather than operating as a stage for an exchange of ideas.
5. Centralize the core topics of your addresses to the extinction the local interests and artisan pieces of writing.
6. Through lending practices create an undesirable local market by haranguing those who “lift” pieces of your content to share on their own sites.
7. Drive as many middle class, conservative wage earning males and females out of your readership community as possible.
8. Encourage devaluation of your writing by the steady increase in uncontroversial topics as possible.
9. Encourage the attraction of the lowest common denominator of readership traditionally interested in blame and one upmanship.
10. Allow a build up of substandard, intellectually un-challenging topics as possible.

I recently went through the long and drawn out process required to move from my current position across the country to another organization involved in a very similar field of behavior interventions. In the end the core team at that organization felt that my own experiences were too divergent from the model they had in place.

I must admit I was annoyed. I had invested very valuable time and a lot of travel days and hundreds of miles in preparing to shift my location to the new position. After two initial meetings I was led to believe that the only hold up was budget approval for an additional position. In fact, I was invited to come to a “casual meeting” to become acquainted with the behaviors team and work out final coordination details.

Much to my amazement, a few days after the meeting I received and email (yes and email, not a telephone call or a letter) letting me know they had decided to “continue to interview candidates for the position.” First and foremost, I you are in a position to work with potential staff members don’t do that. Don’t send an email saying your going to continue to look for a more philosophically in line candidate. It is extremely poor etiquette, and communicates a very weak message. However, when you find yourself on the receiving end with similar experience (and you will if you are aggressive in your career choices) here are a few touchstones I relied on that may help you along as well.

1. Hold on to your humility.

2. Have an enduring impact.

3. Don’t look for the quick, shoddy, flashy fix.

4. Measure your success by the integrity of your work product.

5. Seek to find the lesson from adversity rather than the absence of adversity.

6. Expect the best but don’t be thrown if you encounter less than wonderful events.

We are a nation ever seeking greater productivity. You will rarely pick up a leadership publication that does not speak to the topic. Unfortunately, though many bemoan the low productivity few offer you help for increasing your own productivity.

Here are a few mental nudges that you may incorporate to improve your own personal productivity. 

1. Procedure Streamlining: Procedures (you may be more familiar with the term Standard Operating Procedure, or SOP) tend to evolve without focus on efficiency or effectiveness. Bottlenecks develop that interrupt work pace and slow down work turn out, thus increasing costs. Procedure Streamlining reduces lost time costs, improves efficiency and optimizes quality.

2. Focus Workshops: Few of us enjoy workshops but if we provide ourselves and staff members with the proper training productivity will improve. Focus workshops and success coaching help us to reach and maintain goals. Such programs are also known as in-service training or continuing education programs. They are especially prevalent in professional fields.

Focus trainings also provide:

- Quality control measures

- Uniformity of procedure implementation

- A comfort reference source to rely on

3. Productivity Quotas: Quotas need not be evil or arbitrary. In fact creating realistic productivity quotas involves measuring work time requirement and using those times to project completion rates.

- improves the sense of ownership on your program

- creates a “bar” for measurable improvement

- provides an opportunity to calculate productivity for other functions

4. Operation Productivity Report: This report is based on the collecting data from each component within the process. This provides  data for effectively planning personal productivity goals.

This data is usually, presented by:

-Time of day

-Location

-Equipment

-Specific task

Embracing and implementing these four nudges will improve your productivity and free time for other pursuits.

flickr home office

The tools on your workspace should contribute to how well you do you tasks and not the the clutter. Finding the right balance between what consitutes a tool and what qualifies as clutter is a razor edge issue. Here are some tips for creating a productively organized work area.

As more and more of us are spending at least a portion of our time working from home several work from home related problems have arisen. One of the most prevalent of those is stress from feeling overwhelmed.

However, the overwhelm experienced at home isn’t quite the same as that experienced at the office. At the office the sense or overwhelm seems to come from ever increasing demands for productivity, growth and out put. The overwhelm at the home office seems to be more connected with the physical environment. At the home office the biggest issue seems to be that things are literally, piling up on you.

Frustration begins because we don’t know how to even start getting organized. A desk drawer becomes a junk drawer. A garage becomes a salvage yard.

But, Sanada McHehee owner of Organizing by Sanada has develop an excellent system called O.R.G.A.N.I.Z.E. that purports to streamlined and strack in eight simple steps. Sanada looks to be a great coach. Here is her plan.

1. Overview.
Identify the reasons for the clutter. Are you continuing the pack rat pattern of your parents? Are you holding on to long past memory artifacts? Do you buy too much? Are you simply existing in quarters that are too small?

2. Remove.
Start with one drawer and eliminate every thing in it you don’t absolutely have to have.

3. Group.
Sort similar items together. Summer clothes go together. Outside items go together.

4. Arrange.
Place each group of like items in an appropriate storage container. Remember under the bed and stackable bin resources.

5. Name.
Label and DATE everything. If you haven’t used it in 6-8 months, get rid of it.

6. Innovate.
Calendar all your important dates. Build a to do list for the next day each night. Keep it simple.

7. Zone.
Create work zones for the areas of your home where you do the most work. A file cabinet next to your computer. A book shelf in your office closet. A cork board on your wall.

8. Enjoy!
Enjoy your new streamlining. You work hard so, you should reward yourself for finding ways to work smarter.

Elemental Value Added Truth: The first step to overcoming frustration is to take action; any action.