Just as people and machinery get tired, there is something called Networking Fatigue. Here are some symptoms. See if you agree and maybe you have even experienced them.
- You view the next “networking” opportunity as if you were going to the dentist for a root canal.
- You don’t want anyone to give you news because it means you have to do something with it.
- You want to have “non-social” media for awhile. You’ve twittered, linkedin, and facebooked too much and you need a BREAK!
- You want members of your network to ask someone else instead of you for help.
- Your fingers hurt from texting; your eyes hurt from reading emails and your mind rolls from following all those threads. You’re becoming unraveled.
- You don’t want any suggestions of what to watch on YouTube or Hulu or anywhere else for that matter.
- You don’t have anything interesting to say and you feel neither does anyone else.
- You don’t want to be asked to join a network; a deserted island seems much more appealing.
- You don’t want to go for coffee, go for lunch, go for drinks, go for anything. Laying low is your idea of perfect.
- You have a strong need to do what Faith Popcorn, author of The Popcorn Report (yes, her name really is Faith Popcorn), called “cocooning”. It has also been referred to as “bunkering” when the symptom is at its worst — basically it’s the overwhelming desire to hide away.
It’s okay! It happens to us all. There’s nothing wrong with you that a nice long stay in a monastery or nunnery or quiet solo cruise across any ocean wouldn’t cure.
My recommendation: just quit Networking for awhile. Read my related post, Networking Burnout, for some ideas to avoid having it happen to you in the first place.
(From The Networker’s Guide to Success 3rd Edition, ebook by Jan Triplett available at Apple, Amazon, & Nook or in print or as a pdf from the BSC)
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