Comment Challenge Day 17: Five in Five

You should be nice and relaxed after yesterday, so today we're going to do something fun. Sue Waters pointed me to a cool little activity on Tony Tallent's blog called "Five in Five." The idea is challenge yourself to do 5 comments in 5 minutes, although no scrimping on quality by doing something easy like "I like this post" on five different blogs. This is harder than it sounds because if you're going to read 5 posts and leave reasonably thoughtful comments on each, it will probably take you longer than 5 minutes (Tony ended up taking 28 minutes to comment on 8 posts). The premise is fun, though.

Once you've done it, be sure to blog about what happened and to tag your post with "comment08"

Comments

[Tony Karrer]

I'm not sure I agree with this concept. I like the idea of pushing yourself to engage, but not just somewhat spamming out comments.

[Michele Martin]

Well, I definitely don't think people should spam out comments with this, Tony. I tried to suggest that people shouldn't do that by saying that they shouldn't scrimp on quality. I also think that if you check out Tony's original idea, he ended up not being able to do 5 in 5 because he was still trying to maintain quality. The engagement is definitely the important thing--if you can do it succinctly and quickly, that's the challenging part.

[Kate Foy]

Michele, I'm having 50c each way on this one. I agree with Tony that superficial comment 'hits' would constitute spam ... I'm feeling a bit the same way about the current fad to get as many followers as possible on Twitter ...why? On the other hand, the challenge to leave something meaningful is one I can't resist. Keep it focussed, simple (not simplistic) and if possible, make it generative. It's also going to take longer than 5 minutes ... that I know before I begin.
PS You're tagged as #1!

[Sue Waters]

The reason why I liked the idea is I spend too long writing comments so I was interested to see how having a time limit could make me more effective. Like Kate says I knew 5 in 5 minutes wasn't achievable but still 28 minutes by Tony for 8 comments was really good -- I know I definitely take longer than this.

[Tony Tallent]

Hello! The "5 in 5" challenge inspired by the 31 Day Challenge is all about challenging the mind and keyboarding fingers to engage and let go of need to over-think, over-wonder, over-do our comments. In no way do I suggest creating spam-like comments in this challenge. What I am suggesting is fueling our minds and fingers to let our thoughts out quickly and acutely. I was not able to create 5 quality commments in 5 minutes myself. Challenging myself to do this helped me realize what I was capable of doing in 5 minutes (or 28 minutes). This small idea also brought me to the thought of what other types of communications and actions I can bring about in a short span of time when I am very focused. 5 minutes is an ideal, not a rule.
Here's to being quick and ernest.
Best,
Tony

[Michele Martin]

Hi Tony--thanks for elaborating on the idea behind 5 in 5. I agree that having a focus can be very helpful--gets you to the point. I also agree that it's virtually impossible to do! :-)