Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Alex Fayle of Someday Syndrome.

A quick Google search produces what feels like a million and one guides explaining what Twitter is and how to use it. Leo has several great guides himself here on Zen Habits. But like any community, as Twitter grows it will begin to split up into smaller communities – after all no matter how much we might want to participate in the full Twitter-stream, we can only handle a small portion of it.

Personal development has become a highly popular blog topic for bloggers and destination for readers. Twitter will likely soon follow, with segments already developing in the personal development arena.

So, if you’re a personal development blogger or reader, how can you use Twitter to enhance your journey? Here are nine ways that I use it.

1. Get your nose out of your belly button
Personal development requires a lot of inward gazing. Sometimes we take it too far and turn the exploration into navel-gazing. By reaching out to others on Twitter we get out of our heads. And by turning our gaze outward, we will improve our chances of actually moving forward (because walking with our noses in our belly buttons just begs for a nasty accident to happen).

2. Connect to others on the same path
It’s easy to feel alone on our personal journeys. Everyone interprets personal development in a different way, sometimes conflicting with our way of thinking. When we connect to a myriad of other people on their own personal development journeys we broaden our horizons and gain new perspectives. While it might produce tension occasionally, more often it will help our journey by providing new ways of thinking about things.

3. Develop focus
Twitter requires us to be brief and clear. In talking about personal development many of us are wordy and rarely get to the point. With Twitter’s 140 character limit we have to present our thoughts and ideas in a concise manner. We can’t ramble, which means before we start typing we have to be aware of what we think and really focused on the core thoughts, attitudes and actions that will move us forward.

» Continue your journey »