5 Ways to Improve Your Life with Twitter

(plus one bonus one!)

1) Quit Smoking – I used to smoke. A lot. And giving that up was one of the hardest things I’ve ever accomplished. If only I had been able to use a service like Qwitter.

Qwitter currently has 725 people using it to help them stop smoking. It tracks your cigarette consumption, allows you to keep a journal to help express your frustration, shows you your progress, and probably most importantly, provides support of others in the same boat.

2) Lose Weight – Similar to the support provided for smokers, using friends to help each other stay accountable can help with your weight loss goals. Just this week Lyn reached out to find like-minded people looking to lose a few pounds.

Making your goals public is a great way to help you stick to them. And if you want to skip the fast food and just eat better? Try searching for a ‘healthy recipe‘ instead.

3) Grow Plants – I love having plants around the home. They reduce dust and noise, make you feel calmer and (apparently) remove chemicals from the air. What’s not to like?

Well, I guess the downside is when you look around and see the beautiful green thing you envisioned has been reduced to a browning mess in a bucket of dry dirt.

For some reason, I’m absolutely incapable of keeping up with watering my plants. Enter Twitter! How about this amazing concept, a device which will let your plants tweet you when they need water? (ok, it’s almost a $100, but the idea is cool!)

4) Laugh - “University of Maryland School of Medicine presented results of the university’s study on the effect of laughter on cardiovascular health. The study indicates, (that) laughter appears to cause the endothelium to dilate and increase blood flow. Specifically, laughing was found to increase blood flow by more than 20 percent, with the positive effect lasting for up to 45 minutes.”

You know who’s funny? People on Twitter. Well, not all of them obviously, but enough that you can enjoy yourself. Much has been written about how Twitter has made tv more social. It also makes it a lot funnier. I wasn’t even watching the Grammys on Sunday, but there were so many funny comments appearing in my stream I had to turn it on to fully appreciate them (favorite of the night, @chrisroberts: “coldplay, the wiggles called. they want their jackets back.”)

No? Well how about a little schadenfreude? When actor, director, comedian and writer Stephen Fry got stuck in an elevator last week, he posted this picture which has been seen almost 80,000 times so far. And certainly if you’re going to get stuck, there are few people who would be more entertaining to be stuck with.

5) Exercise your brain – Why not write the Great American Novel?

Each November NaNowriMo (National Novel Writing Month) encourages people to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days. Of course, now they’re on Twitter to help you, as are many other participants.

If that doesn’t appeal, how about this? In Japan, 5 of the top 10 best-selling novels of last year were ‘cellphone novels’ – “composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens ” (NYT) – surely that could be done just as easily on Twitter?

Actually, it’s already being done – check out the Twitter novels, Small Places, Slice (from Penguin Books, no less!) or Novelsin3lines. Can you do better?

And Your Bonus! – Use Twitter to Help Others
On Thursday, 12 February, over 175 cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals, bringing together Twitter communities to raise awareness (and money) for Charity: water.
All the events are 100% volunteer, and 100% of the money goes to charity:water projects. Find out more at Twestival.com, and see how you can help others.

That might even make you feel better about yourself too!