The internet is huge and is absolutely easy to get lost in, you find yourself typing something into google like ‘used audi’ and leaving your desk 3 hours later after reading the history of audi rallying. More so with blogs and business reading, I could spend every waking moment of my life reading things written about business online, business blogs, economist reviews archive statistics, whatever. So to combat this I have developed a little system that works for me, and I thought I would share it with you..

I am using firefox and googlereader - two things I would suggest everyone uses.

Firstly I have a folder in my bookmarks toolbar (creating folders is a great way to organise links), and in this folder I have two other folders entitled ‘new‘ and ‘good‘ - these are fairly self explanatory.

Secondly I also have google reader set up and ready to add feeds to subscribe too.

I also then stick a google reader bookmark in the reading folder for quick access.

In essence as you browse the internet for whatever you usually read, if you bookmark pages you think may be good to read later - save the bookmark in this new ‘reading->new’ folder. Doing this rather than reading the page then when you should be doing something else will help you prioritise your time.

Then when you actually do have a spare moment to do some reading (or in the evenings) you can go to the new folder and do a bit of reading, saving the good sites into the good folder and adding their rss feeds to your google reader. Mercilessly delete bookmarks to sites that are not hard to find or don’t have something good and uniquely interesting to you on.

This system helps me to not spend my working time reading and to spend my time reading rather than surfing.

Hope it works for you!

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Like this post? Maybe you would fancy reading one of my other posts on business time management and efficiency!:

• Blogging for business - how to blog more effectively for business
• Pagex - A great little bolt on seo cms that will save you loads of time running a website
• 10 Steps to submitting your site - Startup websites are easily launched by following these steps