Optimizing your time online to increase productivity
The other day I was browsing my favourite webmaster forums and in a specific discussion from another members comment I suddenly realized my internet activities and hobbies have somehow become a part time job. The reason I say part time is because I already have a full time career. I have many active websites with members that visit often. When I first started developing and promoting on the web my job was easy and consisted of one forum. Today I have over 15 active websites to manage and maintain. I have 3 forums, 5 blogs, and 7 other websites.
Out of them all Blog Engage has taken the most dedication and effort to maintain at a reasonable consistency.
The web literally has taken over my life to a certain point. I work half a day and when I come home for lunch I manage and moderate my many websites and return to work for the remainder of the day. When I get home in the evening the first thing I do is manage and maintain my websites. This is a personal choice I make and I do it in order to maintain my respect and name on the web. I don’t want any visitors to see spam or inappropriate content on my sites so I ensure they’re clean.
Now for the first year of doing this it was more or less a hobby and I was enjoying it very much. Today I find it’s interfering with my career and personal life. At this point I knew I had to do something in order to make this part time job go away and get back my hobby I once enjoyed. I set boundaries for myself if you will! I only allow a maximum amount of time online now and I never go past this allotted time period. Overall this turned out to be a lesson in time management. When I’m online I get things done. I could easily say I’m 200% more productive when online as oppose to 3 or 4 months ago.
How do you become more productive online?
Set goals for yourself and know what you want to achieve online before sitting at your computer. Setting time limits that you can spend on each activity will increase your overall productivity online dramatically. I would also suggest organizing your favourite’s folder in Internet Explorer of Firefox. This will allow you to access all the sites you need within minutes an again you’re saving time.
Seems I’m starting to enjoy my social web activates a lot more now that I can spend more time elsewhere! I really enjoy visiting the blogs submitted here at blog engage and have become friends with so many people! I like engaging with bloggers and joining the discussions at their blog. I’m also a big fan of web forums and like to promote and interact with people inside them.
I’m by far not the best I can be when it comes to optimizing and my time increasing my productivity but as I work towards improving this I notice my hobby is slowly coming back. Remember the more you can get out of what you put into something in less time will allow you to do twice as much! Let’s try a few questions here and see if we can get a response.
Do you waste a lot of time online due to the lack of organizational skills?
Have you set time limits that you can spend on specific projects or tasks?
What other tips would you recommend to our readers to save time online and be more productive?
Cheers,
bbrian017
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Recently I’ve begun to set more goals for myself, yeah. Just today I was like, “I need to get the mock-up done, email this client, and create a design logo!” I finished all of these tasks, so my online work is effectively done for today, and I do feel kind of accomplished.
I think a big part of organization is just personal restraint. I used to spend hours on Diligent, but it got worse and worse, and I think that’s because I was doing ‘tweaks’ and not making huge strides forwards. If you don’t aim for future goals, you’re not going to be very successful.