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3 November, 2011 By Sarah Wood Leave a Comment

Is the Internet Just Too Interesting? Avoiding the Online Time Drain

This afternoon I’ve been listening to some classic music from the 1970s and 1980s that took me back nostalgically to a simpler time – or one that can at least be viewed now at a distance through a simplification filter.What I set out to do this morning was firmly listed down, and I have ticked through a few of the items I had on a list that in reality was too long for the day I have at hand. I love the internet, having worked with it since the mid-1990s I can’t really recall a time before it was an essential part of my working and non-working day. I don’t usually listen to music when working as I get too involved with the music and less so in the work, and I am finding that in a similar way I am getting too involved with the content I am consuming online rather than that I am also creating.

I have blogged before about how lovely and distracting having two small children is, taking away some of the choice about how much time I spend on work versus supporting them as and when they need it; and I have still not found the answer to working successfully and without starts and stops through holiday times. This week my motivation has been at a low, as all the momentum I had built up in the last half-term seems to have dissipated in the space of the few half-term days which were precious and fun for the family but in the end not contributing to moving along my business as I should.

There is so much excitement and interest in finding new ideas and new people to share them with, and I have been learning so much from reading blogs and sites from others that I have been neglecting my own; so I need to start focusing better and planning out both my limited time and my own particular balancing act with a little more grace than I am yet managing. Engagement with others is a great way of finding inspiration and developing my own interests, but that should be a confined and targeted activity within everything else I am doing.

I am determined to crack this and improve my attention abilities, and to do this I need to stop flitting from site to site in search of more and further things I could do, avoid the online time drain, and instead focus on the handful of things I need to do in order to progress.

So I am taping up a list of my objectives where I can see it, writing down time I am spending on various activities so that I can see where the less-obvious time-wasting is happening, and shortening my to-do list to things I can achieve in short chunks so that I can see and appreciate my progress. I have also mapped out the hours of my days and picked up the odd hour here and there I can make use of consistently that was maybe less focused before.

One of the internet’s deepest attractions to me is its endless possibilities; but that very limitless appeal also holds the seeds of an infinite ability to drain time from the day if viewed without a set of focused priorities in mind. So for me it’s time to set my present-day simplification filter, and you will start to see the results as we go headlong through this term to the Christmas holidays.

What is your biggest non-productive time drain and how do you manage it? Do you have any tips on how to handle working for yourself and also parenting small children? I would love to hear in the comments below.

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Filed Under: effective e-business Tagged With: online strategy, working mum

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