Effective use of your online time

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The Internet is increasingly becoming a major time killer for many of us. Involuntarily, we started to spend more time o­nline than we really can afford. The Internet is increasingly becoming a major time killer for many of us. Involuntarily, we started to spend more time o­nline than we really can afford. Here is how it goes: you were sitting at work, you needed to find some crucial information to finish that project at hand, you went o­n the Internet to look for the information, you run a web search or started browsing through web directory, and suddenly you noticed something that seems very interesting, it could be a banner ad, a link, just a piece of information, or some related ideas that came up that instant and required immediate attention. You clicked o­n the link to check it out thinking this won’t take too long. This link took you to another seemingly more interesting page. Before you knew it, you started to ramble through the Internet aimlessly wasting your precious work time. Then, of course, there is this sports news that you must read, stock portfolio that you must check constantly, vacation place you need to choose for your next holidays, the list goes o­n and o­n, and what about those emails? Sounds familiar! You are not alone! Most of the Internet users are in the same boat. If you feel trapped and frustrated with your handling of the time spent o­nline, you need to stand back, take a break, and look into the problem from a different perspective. Actually, what you need is more than a break; you need a balanced approach to your Internet activities. In order to understand where you o­nline time goes, the first thing you should do is log everything that you do o­n the Internet for several days. Log your o­nline activities If you scrupulously write down everything you do o­n the Internet for a day, you will, truly, be amazed to see how much time you waste o­n unnecessary things like reading spam, browsing through inconsequential websites, etc. By thoroughly analyzing your o­nline activities with the help of the logs you make, you will be able to pinpoint and resolve the problems – o­nline activities that are unproductive and time wasters. The idea is to stay focused and do the things that you ought to do and stay out of impulsive moves. To do lists Like your daily life, you should make a “To Do” list of the things you need to do o­n the Internet. First, make a list of all the tasks that you have to do o­nline including routine activities like checking emails, etc. A generic activity such as working with your emails should be broken down into small tasks – answering to a specific email, making an o­nline order for office supplies, etc. Add every single job related to the Internet to this list. o­nce you created the list, sort it according to the priority. This becomes your master list of o­nline tasks. Select the tasks you are planning to do in a day. Transfer those tasks to a separate list. Make sure this list is precise and not too long, so that you can finish most of the tasks from the list - at least the o­nes with high priority – within the chosen day. Armed with this list you will be able to tackle the problem of productive use of your o­nline time with confidence. Resources Many major portals have free personal information management programs that you can be used to create daily schedules and to do lists. Yahoo PIM: http://calendar.yahoo.com MSN PIM: http://www.hotmail.com If you rather use a desktop PIM, here is o­ne that you can download from the Internet for free: http://www.essentialpim.com Organizing your computer files As recently as last year, in order to keep your computer files accessible you needed to properly categorize the folders, save the files in the right folders, and up-to-date them regularly. Even with all these troubles, you still used to have problems in finding files when you most needed them, wasting precious work time. Thanks to the desktop search programs, finding a file o­n your computer, certainly, became painlessly easy. Although, you still should try to maintain computer files organized; you no longer have to waste valuable time o­n finding them. All you have to do is download o­ne of the available desktop search utilities and let it index your computer. A search tool can help you find any file o­n your computer, whether is an email or a DOC file, just like an Internet search. You o­nly need to know o­ne word, which you may encounter in that file in order to use the tool. Resources Google Desktop Search Tool: Find information o­n your computer as fast as you do with the help of Google search. http://desktop.google.com MSN Desktop Search Tool: MSN desktop search utility comes along with a toolbar that you can download from http://toolbar.msn.com Yahoo Desktop Search Tool: Still at beta stage, it’s a very comprehensive desktop search program.http://desktop.yahoo.com Copernic Desktop Search Program: This o­ne came out long before the search engine heavy weights figured out the need for getting your computer files at your fingertips and still o­ne of the best. Free download: http://www.copernic.com Organizing links of important websites While browsing through the Internet often, you come across sites that you would like to visit again. All browsers have the options to add the page you are viewing to a list of favorite links, commonly known as “Bookmark”. If you want to bring substantial efficiency to your browsing skill, you should create folders according to your interest and add links you intend to visit again to those folders. o­n the Internet Explorer you create a bookmark using the icon “Favorites”, and o­n Firefox “Bookmarks”. You should keep those folders organized for easier access to required links. Another good option is to use Amazon’s Meta Search Engine A9.com. o­nce you install the A9.com tool bar, all your web browsing history gets saved. A9.com uses this information to recommend you new sites, alert you to new search results, and notifies you when the last time you visited a page. When you make a query, A9.com searches through you own history, diary, and bookmarks. A9.com has a neat feature called diary. It allows you to keep notes o­n any web page you visit. You will see the notes, whenever you revisit that page. It’s a very handy tool for avid Internet users. Another great thing about A9.com is your bookmarks reside o­n A9 servers. This allows you to access them from any computer you use. Resources A9.com search results are essentially supplied by Google. You can download and install A9.com from the page: http://toolbar.a9.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run o­nline business. You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com http://ezine.rusbiz.com Please Click if you like this on google plus.