Adam Kayce

Focus is perhaps one of the most crucial qualities to develop when it comes to bringing your best to work. When you’re focused, you can get incredible amounts of work done in short periods of time. Focus makes staying on task easy. And there’s one question in particular you can ask yourself that’s supposed to inspire herculean amounts of focus.

Now, you’ve no doubt seen this question circulating amongst the well-intentioned, self-help best-seller bookshelves’ residents for years. It’s pulled out time and again as the ultimate refiner of focus, the samurai sword of the cut-through-the-fluff-ers’ arsenal, the go-to tool of the productivity heroes’ utility belts. Ready?

If you only had six months to live, what would you do right now?

Ta da! Answer that question, and all your troubles will be solved, right?

Well…
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Recently on Smashing Magazine, there was a fantastic article by Jean-Baptiste Jung of Cats Who Code, called 10 Killer WordPress Hacks. Now, many times when you see a title like that, you probably do the same thing I do: yawn. Because you know as well as I do that out of those 10, only two or three are probably going to be any good.

Au contraire this time, my friends. Jean-Baptiste rocked the house with this one. I was already using one of his tricks, I immediately put three of them into practice while reading the article, and two more are on my to-do list now done. It only took me about ten minutes, tops.

But I’m a code-happy kinda guy.

I realize that what I can do in three minutes might take you thirty, at least, just because you’re doing other things during your day besides coding, and I, on the other hand, do a lot of it.

So, because Twitter and blogging are getting to be so much more widespread these days, I thought I’d break down “Tip #5: Create a ‘Send to Twitter’ Button” for you, in case you’ve got a more complicated installation than just adding a link. If your theme uses images along with your links, as one of my client’s sites does, then just adding the code is going to break your visual layout, and make you look like a hack.

We can’t let that happen now, can we?
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I’m twittering now… are you?

Love it or hate it, Twitter is a social phenomenon that deserves recognition. It may not be for you, and if you’ve tried it to find out, great. Enjoy the silence.

If you haven’t tried it, though, I’d recommend giving it a shot. It could just be the best thing you’ve ever found. Once you’ve had it demystified and myth-debunked, that is.

Update: I’m still Twittering, although less than I used to. Why? I think I’m still figuring out how to use it… although Havi’s post (look at that last link) has helped tremendously with my attitude towards the whole thing.

The Twitter community has also grown substantially, and there are some fantastic tools and resources out there in case you’re wanting to dip your toes in the pool. I heartily recommend TweetDeck as the best Twittering tool out there, and Darren Rowse’s TwiTip is an excellent site for picking up great twitter tips, especially for beginners.