This post is for the creators in the world.

The great multitudes of noise throughout our digital playgrounds has unfortunately made it harder and harder to interact with work of true value.

You will never hear me say that social media networks aren’t valuable. They are. In fact they are tremendously valuable. They satisfy one of the most basic needs of human beings. The desire to connect. I will speak in great detail in the future about how one might use social networks to accomplish a number of objectives but one of the unfortunate results of the profoundly widespread adoption and use of these networks is that we have become addicts of the noise.

Yes I realize the irony that you might very well be reading this due to finding it on a social network but stay with me. How many of you have become addicted to scrolling through the endless news feeds containing everything you choose to surround yourself with? I certainly know I have from time to time although I deliberately attempt to set up my networks to surround me with as much of the content that I actually want. That is certainly not an easy task.

The challenge for people who want to put work of real value into the world is that they must contend with the countless sources of noise that drown them out. To illustrate my point one need only look at Mr. Tim Ferriss. If you don’t know who this is I highly recommend his works to include his famous “Four-Hour Work Week” book. Tim could be called many things: a lifestyle design expert, productivity fanatic, angel investor, martial artist, and world champion in tango. One thing that Tim is not is a lover of email. In fact he writes extensively throughout his works about how he rarely uses it and when he does he does it in batches, which simply means he doesn’t keep his email open. He checks it at certain times and that’s it. I have been a long time fan of Tim and have followed his blog for nearly as long. I received a very interesting message recently. Tim Ferriss, the productivity guru himself, is adopting email as a way of communicating better with his blog followers. Here is an excerpt from the message he wrote:

“…I hated email, so I didn’t want to send you email. Simple as that. Do unto others, right?

But things have changed.

Now, with Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and hundreds of clones, the Internet and mobile are a battlefield of noise. Even if you “like” my Facebook fan page, my updates will rarely reach more than 10% of you.”

Tim is a creator of work that has real value and he knows that if he doesn’t adopt new methods the noise will drown out his message. The same can be said of some of the most important minds of our time. How can we combat this noise so that our voice can be heard?

If you, like Tim, want to be taken seriously in your chosen endeavors, be they personal or professional, you must learn to create work of real value and not just noise. Be a trusted source of intelligence not just data. Learn to speak less and say more. Be an original creator of work that cuts through the noise by being of the utmost quality instead of “hacking” your way to attention. Many experts in their respective fields, in fact nearly everyone I’ve ever experienced that has “chops”, appreciate the true creators of value in the world not the multitudes of people that try to fake it. You have to earn your right to be taken seriously by proving you are capable of creating what is necessary be that shareholder value, original content, or innovative products.

In the end you must ask yourself one question: “If someone else created what I am about to put out into the world and sent it to me, would I want to experience it?”

Make sure the answer is yes.