Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

I have a goal of getting over 1,000 LinkedIn connections.  Anyone will tell you that it's not the number of connections that you have, but the quality of the connections that you have.  What's the point of having 1,000 connections if none of them can vouch for you, right?  You'll probably roll your eyes at this, but I can say that many of those connections (outside of the executive recruiters) were made in the spirit of helping vs. taking. (Look at the number or recommendations I've written vs. the number that I actually have).  To expand on that, in Adam Grant's book,  Give and Take, he talks about Adam Rifkin "...who in 2011 had more LinkedIn connections to the 640 powerful people on Fortune's lists than any human being on the planet....His network includes the founders of Facebook, Netscape, Napster, Twitter, Flickr, and Half.com."  If you want to understand his philosophy for how he built his network, you'll have to read the book....