The other day I was talking someone through how I work. Used to practices which came about before social media and productivity platforms, their questions were about email. Together we made a list of the channels people connect with me for work:

• Work Email
• Personal email
• Client email
• Network email
• LinkedIn Messaging
• LinkedIn commenting
• LinkedIn Groups
• Home Slack
• Client Slack
• Network Slack
• Blog comments
• Work Teams
• Client Teams x3
• Client Miro Board
• WhatsApp
• Zoom
• Google Hangouts
• Webinars – that can be a range of platforms
• SMS
• Phone calls

They, quite reasonably, asked:

How are you meant to remember all of those?

And you know what? I don’t know.

I do know connecting isn’t connection. The act of being connected is meaningless unless you use that channel effectively to maintain relationships.

Please do make connections, don’t just connect.