You Tube, Google Video, Myspace - Driven To Distraction Top Tips
Distractions.
We all have them every day - the phone, email, the TV and in the online world there is for all intents and purposes, a limitless supply of attention distractors.
My “favourites” at the moment are You Tube, Google Video and Myspace - they are highly addictive and hyperlinking has never been so insidiously used (when it comes to wasting time).
That said, the first thing you can do in combating any time leech is to recognise it. I am getting better and better at recognising the time leeches which crop up in my life and am also getting better and better at taking remedial action.
Here are the top strategies I now employ:
1. With email: I unsubscribe from as many lists as I can. You know the feeling of “Oh, if I unsubscribe now I’ll miss something good” - uhhh, no. You’ll most likely never read the good message due to a full inbox - besides you can always resubscribe and or find an RSS feed.
2. Again with email, have specific times to check your email and allot only a certain amount of time to do the checking.
3. RSS feeds - Get a good reader, I used to recommend FeedDemon (a paid client) and it’s still a great choice but if you want to go for the zero cost option, you can’t beat the Flock browser (built using the same codebase as Firefox). Concentrating on getting your news/info via RSS means you’ll get through a whole lot more information, a whole lot quicker.
4. Allow yourself the odd 5 minutes on Google Video or You Tube or Myspace for that matter!
The last point needs further explanation as it is totally the wrong thing to do if you do it wrong!
Ok, so we all know these videos and social networking sites can seriously eat into your time, but the trick is to minimize how much of your time is “eaten away”. What better way to do this than to reward yourself for carrying out the tasks you had on your to-do list that day.
Start out small and increase the work to reward ratio as time goes on. I guarantee you will find yourself making significant inroads into your work whilst still enjoying the odd detour along the way.
If you’re really disciplined, maybe you might want to do leave your “rewards” till the end of the day.
All the best,
Tom
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Tags: Time Management
