Or C. B. G. B. ...
Currently Reading: Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte
#7 - Reduce blog browsing.
In the Firefox browser, right click on a folder containing bookmarks. Select 'Open in tabs'. This is what I would do to read a dozen plus blogs. Easy and convenient. I could quickly see which ones had new posts. Reading the blogs only takes minutes. Following the links takes more minutes. Then even more as I went through the comments, and then the links to the commentor's blogs, then more links to other interesting places and blogs. It is enough to make one feel all bloggy.
I imagine RSS feeds are even more convenient and easy to amass even more blogs to check on and read and link from. What I need is not convenient and easy, but difficult and time consuming. I need a barrier, a hurdle. Over the past few posts, I've moved my blog bookmarks to this site (on the right hand side), vetting a few along the way. Now I have to click on each one to get to them. More work, more steps, and fewer blogs visited each time I fire up the computer. I don't feel like I'm missing much since I can catch up on the posts quickly.
Of course, I make an exception for a select few frequent visitors. :-)
Progress: Good; the end is near.
posted by Todd Wheeler at 5/29/2007 09:54:00 AM
12 Comments:
I went to RSS feeds for everything I can. Although, I have to admit, I need to cut back.
I keep on trying to do this exercise for myself to rustle up more time for writing and reading. Everything else I can think to cut involves pay cuts and betrayal of trusts. Ah, well, I'm come up with something.
Congrats on your plan working, Todd. I hope you're putting all this newly found time to good use.
A good idea. I could use a few fewer distractions myself, these days.
Steve: Oh yes, very good use. Just recently I did a seal coat on my driveway, built some shelves for my daughter's toys in the basement, caught up on my library books. Oh yeah, wrote a few words here and there as well. ;-)
Whether I'll manage to keep these up remains to be seen.
LBB: That Lifehacker book had similar suggestions, all requiring IP/website blocking browser tweaks or custom code hacks. This seemed simpler.
I hadn't thought this at the beginning; I suppose much of what I've done is just stepped away from various things. If they are important, they'll still be there later. If not, then it wasn't worth my time to begin with.
You're doing great, Todd. I wish I had such discipline.
At least Miss Snark is gone, along with two other of my regular reads. So I've added Nathan Bransford, Patricia Wood, and Book Ends to my reading list. Gah.
Thanks Cheryl!
Book Ends? Sounds fantastic. Link?
Janni's been posting links to help her not procrastinate on the web.
She says,
"Time To Go lets you limit how much time you're allowed to spend on a given site, rather than not letting you on again until I set time.
...The Kiwi Cloak, that allows you ten minutes of visiting selected sites at the start of each hour, then kicks you off. Especially useful is you have web-based email and check it too often.
Me, I think I'll stick with the Invisibility Cloak for now (seeing as I wrote 3000+ rough draft words yesterday!) But I'm keeping these others in reserve. Because we procrastinators need all the tools we can get.
BookEnds, LLC--A Literary Agency
Thanks for the links, LBB!
Thanks, LBB, I just saw the request.
Um, but isn't that sorta like contributing to the delinquency? ;)
Good point, Cheryl.
"I'm feeling good, I'm feeling oh so fine
Until tomorrow, but that's just some other time
I'm waiting for my [blog]"
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