“Just a quick peek at Twitter…” Most of us have been there. A few spare minutes in the day and you quickly log on to see what’s going on with your social media friends and followers. Spare minutes turn into many minutes, and before long, you’ve wasted a lot of time when, let’s be honest, you could have been doing something more productive.
Like you, productivity is extremely important to me. I want to follow through on objectives, reach targets, meet deadlines and get things done. I’ve discovered that if I don’t proactively manage my time, something else will.
Social Media has made our world considerably smaller.
With a click of a button we can follow people who are leaders in a given field, experts on a specific topic of interest, and inspirational people who we can glean from. Amazing men and women who we may have only heard about in the past, can now daily influence our thinking simply by tweeting a few inspirational words or links to articles and blogs. It really is incredible.
With so much great stuff at our fingertips, how do we NOT let minutes slip into hours online? Well, there’s quite a few tips and pointers out there, but let me share with you how I took control of my social medial life.
One word. Pocket.
Pocket (formerly Read it Later) is an amazing app you can use on your iPhone, iPad, Android or Web Browser. Setting up an account takes mere minutes and it’s ease of use is outstanding.
Here’s how it works. Your scrolling through Twitter (or anywhere online really) and you read something that catches your eye with a link to a blog post or online article. Instead of opening the link at that moment, you quickly save it to Pocket. All of the content connected with that link is downloaded into your Pocket. Then, at a later date… a time you’ve scheduled into your day/week, you open up Pocket and read through all of the articles you saved.
I check twitter a couple of times a day and reply to tweets, briefly connect with people, etc. but save any in depth reading for a time I’ve scheduled into my calendar a couple of times a week. Anything I’ve collected online, or from blogs I subscribe to, are sent to Pocket. Once read, articles are then saved for future reference (thank you Evernote!), shared via Social Media (hello Buffer), or discarded.
Everyone has a system that works for them and their lifestyle. How do you control your social media habits? I’d love to hear your time management tips!
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