Yaicha

I finally got tired of seeing my LinkedIn progress bar stuck at 90%. The explanation offered said that if I recommended someone in my network, then it would go up to 95%. I kind of assumed that if I wrote two recommendations, it would get to 100%, and then I would feel a sense of accomplishment — a social networking task crossed off my “to do” list.

So, with my motivation all about me, I set out to recommend someone by looking through my connections on LinkedIn. I didn’t even get past the A’s before I saw someone worthy of recommendation. “This one will be easy,” I thought, and in just a couple of minutes I was done, having summed up succinctly what a great job this person had done for me in the past.

“OK, I’ll go for 100%,” I thought, still focused on me. I found another connection who was a cinch to recommend, and again only needed a few minutes to write some glowing praise. This was easier than I thought it would be.

I checked my LinkedIn progress bar and found it had not moved. That was disappointing, but I thought maybe there was a time lag. And now that I saw how easy it was to recommend people, and how nice it felt to sing the praises of people who really deserved it, I kept scanning down my list. I’m not sure how long I was at it, but I know I wrote at least half-a-dozen recommendations at one sitting.

It was kind of fun, in fact. I’ve already gotten some grateful and appreciative emails in return. The funny thing is, I started writing them for what was in it for me, and I kept going because I enjoyed giving others praise.

LinkedIn still hasn’t moved my progress bar, so I suppose I will have to contact them to find out why, but it really doesn’t matter. They got me to try something that would benefit people in my network, and now that I’ve tried it I’m going to keep looking for more people to recommend. And I recommend you do the same.

(For a related post, see Simple Words of Praise.)