Yesterday I posted an update to my post, Got the Munchies? Have a Media Snack. I tagged Drew McLellan after the fact, when I discovered his recent post about providing a steady stream of snack-sized messages.

Now I’m tagging yet another person–one who, I’m sure, will make an interesting contribution on the topic–Valeria Maltoni, the Conversation Agent.

Drew and Valeria are two marketing conversationalists on my drastically shortened list of RSS feeds. They make me think.

And this topic made me think. When it comes to media consumption, are we becoming a snack culture? If so, how do we respond? Chris Webb has previously written about the Snack Culture and its effect on his industry, publishing.

I look forward to Drew and Valeria continuing the conversation … and how about you? What’s your take on media snackers?

Fellow Age of Conversation co-author Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Officer at crayon, tagged me for the current meme: Eight Random Things About Me. I’m not sure I can hold your attention for that long, but here goes . . .

1. Although I’m an SOB, I’m a lot shorter than Liz Strauss. A lot.

2. My 83-year-old mother is on Facebook. I haven’t introduced her to Twitter yet, but she does use google as a verb.

3. One of my part-time jobs in college was playing piano for a dinner theater — 8 shows a week for a typical six-week run of each production. Did Fiddler on the Roof twice and never want to hear “If I Were a Rich Man” again. Ever.

4. I have a B.A. in French and used to be fluent. Sometimes I read Loic Le Meur just to see how much I can still understand. I get the gist but can no longer do complete translation. Quel dommage.

5. When I worked in publishing, I once sent all my trash home with our housekeeper, who lived in a neighboring town, so the tabloids could not rummage through my garbage cans for snippets of the hush-hush book I was working on. I should explain that we initiated the long-distance trash hauling after I received an empty FedEx package; an edited copy of the manuscript was missing. (You’re not paranoid if they’re really following you.)

6. I am domestically challenged. Can’t grate cheese without losing a fingernail, and I iron wrinkles into a shirt.

7. I fear I’m way too old to be a fan of I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? … but I iz addikted to teh kittehs.

8. This final one is especially for Mike Chapman, who loves to hear me say that I am my own first cousin … and it’s true.

Now, here’s the best part: According to the official rules (official? surely they’re written down somewhere?), I get to tag 8 others to play the Eight Random Things About Me meme. So, rev your blogging engines — Chris Cree, Jim Long, Robert Hruzek, Jordan Behan, Luc Debaisieux, Carolyn Manning, Susan Reynolds and Kris Hoet.

It’s not like you’ll have 8 years of bad luck if you don’t play along with the 8 Things meme … but we’d love to learn more about you.

Update: This meme is spreading so fast that some of us are tagging each other simultaneously. Thanks to Ted Demopoulos, author of What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging & Podcasting, for also tagging me. Check out his 8 Random Things post and browse the site; Ted is a great resource for the blogging and podcasting community.

My first thought when Carolyn Manning tagged me to write a contribution to The Ultimate Guide to Productivity was, “Who, me? The Princess of Procrastination?”

We writers can be some of the most unproductive people on the planet — or at least it seems that way sometimes. Even when we’re not in full-blown frantic, deadline-inspired, caffeine-gulping, nothing-can-break-my- concentration writing mode, our brains are rarely set on Idle. What appears to be mindless activity or unproductive distraction — say that third Sudoku puzzle of the day, or taking the time to give each of the nine Greek muses an amusing Twitter name (yep, did that yesterday) — can be mere procrastination. But it can also be a way of letting our subconscious work things out creatively while we’re focusing on a different task. This is different from multi-tasking, when you’re trying to do everything at once.

The best way to recharge your brain for writing productivity however, is to give it a complete rest — something that most of us neglect, to our own detriment and, unfortunately, to everyone else’s. Studies show that sleep deprivation costs companies $18 billion a year in lost productivity. [source]

So, here’s my number one tip for ultimate productivity:

Get enough sleep; take naps if you need to.

Quit taking pride in your ability to push your body to its limits.

Quit staring at the monitor until your eyes are glazed over — literally — from not blinking. (Studies show that your blinking rate while working on a computer is far slower than for other activities; this infrequent blinking dries out your eyes.)

Sleep is when our bodies, and our brains, repair themselves. But most 21st-century office workers are sleep-deprived to the point where we “microsleep,” those couple of seconds where your head suddenly bobs in front of an open book — or your boss. Inadequate sleep breaks the body down, causes chronic health problems, and results in dangerous accidents.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to accidents, both at work and on the way home, as well as a myriad of health concerns, including obesity, high blood pressure, and gastrointestinal diseases, stomach ulcers. Studies also show that shift workers suffer from short-term memory disturbances, decreased overall mental ability, headaches, decreased productivity and negative moods and behavior. [source]

When I take my own advice, my writing improves dramatically, and so does my productivity. I’ve written some of my best dialogue, for example, while standing in the shower after a decent night’s sleep.

Now it’s my turn to tag others to share their best tips on productivity. And since I spend so much time on Twitter, I’m going to tag five people I have recently met online and know only through their tweets and blog posts: Cathleen Rittereiser, Annie Boccio, Paull Young, Julie Bonner and Cathryn Hrudicka. *UPDATE: I just corrected the link to Cathryn’s blog; I had it incorrect in my original posting.*

Remember, taggees, that you get more than 140 characters for this assignment!

Note: The Ultimate Guide to Productivity is the brainchild of instigator Ben Yoskovitz.