The Dangers of Social Networking continued...

If you are a Network or Affiliate Marketer you know that the way to make money on the internet is by selling or recruiting. You get a name of someone who is interested in what you have and you cultivate that interest and develop a trusting relationship and then ask them for their credit card info. You may connect with your prospect on the phone or an email, but you don’t make money writing responses in a Forum or sending tweets on Twitter.

The best way to keep time stealing monsters at bay is to create a schedule with some limits. Have you ever sent out an email and gotten an autoresponse message saying that this person returns emails at a certain time daily? I’ll bet you have. When it happens to me I don’t think badly of the person I’m trying to reach. I would like an instant reply but I actually respect them more because they are telling me that they are very busy and their time is valuable and the way they have chosen to deal with all they juggle is to schedule it all out.

Any time you want to become more efficient with your time the first thing you should do is start a log. Just for a few days write down what you do when. List each separate activity and the time you start and the time you stop. If you log onto your computer at 9:00 in the morning, write the time in. If you spend 30 minutes responding to emails, list that. Then at 9:30 if you get on the phone, put that in the log. If you get back on your computer at 10:00, write down the time and what you did on the computer. Every activity- write it down. Two days later you will be able to look at how you really spend your time.

If I’m anywhere near my computer and don’t control my actions, I tend to check my emails over a dozen times a day. I might find something I want to follow and find 30 minutes goes by before I get to another activity. Sometimes it’s only 10 minutes. Logging my time I found that I average about 12 minutes per check, and I check around 12 times a day. That’s 2 hours!

Amazingly when I spend the day away from my computer I do get fewer emails, but the number is close to the same. But when I sit down to go through them I approach it differently. There are a ton to go through so I tend to blow through them spending less time on each one. My replies are shorter. I stay to the point and don’t let myself get off on tangents. I wind up saving time and I’m sure the recipients of those short, concise emails appreciate it too. 

So with the info from a couple days in my log and the knowledge that I can go through a huge number of emails in bulk I made up some rules for myself. I start my workday with my computer by checking all the emails that have come in since I last signed out. When I’m done I do not respond to any other emails until the mid afternoon- unless it’s an emergency. I still check my email but I don’t even open them unless they look time sensitive. If I do open one to check, I try put off responding  until my scheduled afternoon time. Then I’ll spend more time with emails in the evening. I’m not perfect with this, but with my approach I shave off about 40 minutes a day.

I do the same thing with all my Social Media work. Much of that is email anyway, but I don’t just open my favorite forum and let an hour slip by. I schedule that for late afternoon. If I get to the time I normally write in forums and I’m behind in the tasks I have to get done, I’ll skip my forum excursion. I do the same for YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. And I use the time I’ve saved to work on things that make us money.

It works. If you want to lose weight, start by keeping a log of what you eat. If you want to save money, log all that you spend. And if you want to save time, write down where your time goes. Then evaluate the info you find in the logs and make some rules for yourself.

Then comes the next challenge, that other untamed beast- discipline.