Fire Hose Friday

I thought my coworker was just being funny when I overheard him at lunch saying we should do "fire hose friday" to be so annoying, we would turn off everyone from following us on Twitter, so imagine my surprise Friday morning when I read:

OK guys, I'm declaring today #firehosefriday. Participants must tweet no less frequently than every 15 minutes. End of day goal: 0 followers

My first reaction: "hell no." Why? because I was afraid of losing all my followers (what few I had) and afraid that I wasn't witty enough to keep up a constant stream of interesting tweets all day. I thought I would come across as self-absorbed and annoying, because what kind of person could tweet so much and not be those things? So, because I realized I was really resisting this idea, I dove right in. I hoped to feel liberated by watching my twitter and facebook followers drop as the day progressed; I expected to be totally distracted from work and to eventually run out of anything worth mentioning. I braced myself for criticism.

What happened instead amazed me. I found I was less distracted through the day because I was focusing on the here-and-now. I wasn't dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, I was finding interesting and noteworthy things in my daily life, recognizing milestones or pleasant encounters. In fact, I actually had more I wanted to mention than I ever ended up tweeting. This awareness also made me do more things for others because I was enjoying myself so much--so much for being self-centered! Rather than detracting from work, I was so conscious of how often I was reporting my actions (and that my coworkers were all following me on twitter) that I worked in efficient, focused spurts throughout the day. I got loads done even though I was also taking extra time to enjoy a sunny, beautiful Friday.

I was also pretty surprised by the reactions I got from everyone else. Rather than being the huge annoyance I thought it was going to be, I got tons of messages saying how entertained people were, how I was getting them through their days. People would respond to things I said and suddenly I felt more engaged with my group of friends on twitter than I ever had. The abyss I thought I was sending my thoughts into turned out to be a group of caring, interested individuals who wrote right back. What's more, I didn't lose followers. (Well, ok, I lost one, but I don't know which one it was so I don't think it was anyone I cared about.) In fact, I actually gained 8 new followers through the course of the day, the most I'd ever gained in one day since joining twitter.

I consider the Fire Hose Friday experiment to be a resounding success and I recommend it highly to everyone. Though I don't think I would want to do it every Friday, I think I will try to do it again. After all, what have I got to lose?

(to see all the madness, follow me on twitter at chrissysings)