Distractions and Focus Busters

Bound­aries on Blog Reading

Blogs can be a big dis­trac­tion and focus buster. Because blogs tend to have longer posts and in-​​depth arti­cles, they can really be a time vam­pire. This, of course, cre­ates a time man­age­ment issue.

And then there’s the link to the next great blog from the blog you are read­ing and to the next great blog on that blog and to the next great blog on that blog….

Here’s the thing about blogs. You don’t have to read the posts the instant they are pub­lished. You con­trol the time you devote both in amount and when. Every blog offers some sort of free sub­scrip­tion option and most offer both e-​​mail and RSS options.

(Geek Alert: Teacher Candy butting in again. RSS stands for Really Sim­ple Syn­di­ca­tion. Not get­ting tech­ni­cal here, but for those who’ve never used RSS, it cre­ates your own pri­vate magazine-​​like free sub­scrip­tion to all of your favorite blogs in one con­ve­nient place. It’s very like hav­ing your own pri­vate read­ing room at the library that is always filled with your favorite read­ing materials. )

There are any num­ber of appli­ca­tions to help you man­age your blogs. I use Feed­De­mon which works directly with Google Reader. Feed­De­mon is a desk­top appli­ca­tion, mean­ing that it is a pro­gram that runs from my computer’s hard drive. With it, I can down­load all my new RSS feeds and read them offline. If I’m not at my per­sonal com­puter I can use Google Reader to log on. Feed Demon syn­chro­nizes the RSS feeds stored on my com­puter with those still on the Google Reader server, so that I can always access my unread blog posts.

With Feed­De­mon I can eas­ily scan the post titles and decide whether or not it is rel­e­vant for me. I can tag posts I don’t have time for now but would like to check out later so that they are saved. I can cre­ate fold­ers to sort dif­fer­ent types of con­tent together. It just makes it easy.

The thing is you need to be dili­gent in not allow­ing the blogs to get the bet­ter of you. They can suck you into obliv­ion and when you come back out your kids have aged and are sur­prised to see that you’re still alive, ‘cause they thought some alien life form had abducted you.

Learn to sort and prac­tice skim­ming head­lines. And if you have news or enter­tain­ment feeds, be strong. If you miss a few days, you might need to delete stuff. Feed­De­mon allows you to clear an entire folder. Remem­ber you can always visit those places later online or even search them for rel­e­vant con­tent. Delet­ing from Feed­De­mon does not impact the orig­i­nal source documents.

Dis­trac­tion — Bound­aries for Your Worst Offenders

I would be a very bad chick if I didn’t men­tion all the other things that come across your desk in any given day that con­spire to dis­tract you. Those things deserve men­tion and their own set of boundaries.

Mail

Sep­a­rate it imme­di­ately. I walk to the mail­box and sort while I walk back. Then I walk straight to the trash can and dump. What’s left gets a final sort. Pile one is bills and atten­tion items. Pile two is stuff I can get to when I have time. And then I get on with my day.

If you are a good finan­cial doo­bie you don’t need to open the bills right when they come. I usu­ally open impor­tant stuff every other day. I look through my pile two items once a week with the trash can handy. Don’t let mail become an event, it’s not that big a deal.

Cat­a­logs

Clearly cat­a­logs are pile two items. And some of those just go in the trash. There are cat­a­logs that get used for your busi­ness and those get filed. I put the new one in and take the old one out and toss it. I use those plas­tic mag­a­zine hold­ers to orga­nize them so that I can eas­ily find them when I need them. Here’s the thing…catalogs are tools… you don’t need to shop, just file ‘em.

Mag­a­zines

Here’s a tough one. I’m the mag­a­zine Queen. I have stacks. And mostly they are busi­ness related. There are a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent ways to han­dle them.

It is a good idea to keep a few mags handy for when you are wait­ing at the doctor’s office or that type of thing. I also file them and when a year passes I donate them whether or not I’ve read them. If that seems hard to do, remind your­self that the infor­ma­tion in them can be found by search­ing library data­bases and even online.

Mak­ing time to read them is a good idea. Set­ting aside an after­noon where you skim through and make notes or tear out pages is a great idea. I have yet to mas­ter this art but it sounds like a really good idea!

And here’s the best method I found to break the mag­a­zine addic­tion — I ran away to sea for 5 years. That took care of the sub­scrip­tions! A bit extreme, I’ll admit. But effective.

Books

There’s lots of stuff you should be read­ing but it is tough to get to it all. So again, set time aside and keep a book handy for wait­ing times.

Read Fast. It’s not a skill every­one has or wants, but if you learn to speed read or at least read a lit­tle faster and learn the art of skim­ming, you’ll find you have time to get through much more than you might think.

The Eve­lyn Wood book is easy to fol­low and will help you learn the tac­tics to start increas­ing your read­ing speed. It takes prac­tice to become super fast and com­pre­hend. I am no mas­ter but it has helped me get though mate­r­ial faster and it has helped me learn to skim mate­r­ial to get the nuggets out. In the long run, it will save you lots of time.

And, of course, make sure you include read­ing time in your sched­ule when you set your bound­aries. When it’s read­ing time you need to tune out the phone and other dis­trac­tions in order to be efficient.

Oh, and one more thing about reading…fast is good but com­pre­hen­sion is bet­ter. Be sure that you keep a bal­ance between scan­ning and actual read­ing. Many mis-​​communications occur because one or both of the com­mu­ni­cants just did not read.