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!
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
I am not one for joining in phenomenons, I like objectively watching and trying to intervene occasionally for profit purposes. Mainly because the big net phenomenons usually mainly profit their originators and don’t do much apart from drain your time and slice your efficiency. Hence I have curbed my enthusiasm (good program) for facebook, counterstrike and msn. (I purposely never joined myspace!) but recently I fell into the Yahoo Answers Hole.
I say hole but it isn’t all bad. By answering questions well and being a good source of correct and helpful information you can help people and get a little credit (putting your url in source of 20 odd answers might provide 10-20 interested clicks and for search engines that ignore nofollow perhaps some serp climbing.) But it does help people which in cosmic karma isn’t bad, just not financially a great producer. While things are quiet though its a positive step.
It is providing yahoo with free content essentially which I don’t sponsor, but with the communication aspect it draws you in. Networking becomes notworking! There’s numerous equivalent sites out there, that really I would recommend you avoid if your of an addictive nature but want to progress in business, however objective attention towards them, as they are part of the modern business climate is essential.
Having said that if you want to add me as a friend heres my profile…lol god damn viral concepts.