I’ve always loved the name of the blog at 37Signals… Signal vs Noise. They chose well. They write well too.

Signal versus noise perfectly describes how we are living and working right now. We want to be connected, both as business entities and as human beings. But we’re sacrificing hearing the signals because of the noise. I’ve thought about this every time I sent a tweet or an email this week and asked myself, “Is this a signal or am I just adding to the noise?”

The ratio of signal to noise is more relevant to what you put out than it is to what you take in. You can spend your days online endlessly curating, filtering and re-purposing content, or you can create.

Are you endlessly curating, or endlessly creating? You can’t do both.

It’s easy to convince yourself that the time lost exploring links down virtual rabbit holes is your real work. It’s not.

If you have time and energy to find ideas worth sharing, then you’ve got time and energy to bring ideas of your own to life.

Your real work matters. Send signals. Don’t just make noise.

Image by Brent Danley.