Follow The Blue Link Road
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but of late there appears to be an overload of bloggers discussing and sharing their routines and methods for productivity. Some set a 50 minute timer during their working hours to stay focused, some settle into a state of ‘flow’, and others live strictly to their schedules.
Now maybe you’re one of these people, and if so, kudos to you. I however, am not. Seriously, I sit in awe sometimes, wondering how (and if) people actually live like that. Where they taught it at home, school, university? Did they study ‘Time Management’ or read some book on ‘A Motivated Life’ or what? Or maybe it’s something that has a slight genetic swing to it?
Such people must not surf the internet the way I do at times. My RSS subscription list is probably around the 50 mark, and yet most of my online reading time is probably spent on websites I may never visit again. You see, I have a bad habit of following ‘the blue link road’, and before I know it, I’ve weaved my way through dozens of webpages which I never intended to visit, and for the most part, didn’t even know existed!
The usual feeling after consuming an hour in this practice, is guilt. However, it appears that some people, even gurus, reckon this is just the ‘way of the Web’.
Leslie Walker from the Washington Post, talks about her own battle to stay on track with online reading. But after reading a book by Jakob Nielsen, she says,
“Nielsen’s book helped me see this isn’t necessarily wasting time; it may simply be the way of the Web.
Reading his account of how we mentally process information from many different sources online made me think people might learn as much — or more — meandering the Web as reading a good book. Whereas books impart internal cohesion in their ideas, the Web demands that we provide our own order to all the factoids we dredge up from its vast, unstructured swamp of ideas.
Since that requires original thinking, maybe screensucking isn’t so bad, after all.”
Do you agree, or do you think we should just exercise more discipline online? After all, one could ‘follow the blue link road’ forever…
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7 Responses to “Follow The Blue Link Road”
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Hey amigo - thanks for the link.
I used to ‘follow the blue link road’ too much. The problem with that is that it means I am leaving how I spend my time and what I do up to chance. There are goals that I want to accomplish. Believe it or not, I actually have a time in my day for when I check my RSS feeds and just surf the internet. If something catches my eye that requires more time to read then I bookmark it for later.
I guess the bottom line is people’s time management coming into alignment with what is important to them in regards to short-term and long-term goals.
Shawn - I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks now, and I admire your discipline.
I’m with you on meandering: StumbleUpon only makes it worse, but without it I may not have found your blog.
I understand and admire the time managers, but I’m not wired like that.
Chris - I’ve just ’stumbled’ upon StumbleUpon recently, and I must confess to liking it, even though it’s very random.
I should clarify on my 50-minute focused sessions. I do this about 6 hours per day. I’d like to do it for my entire work day, but frankly, I need some flex time. It’s just part of my personality.
I can tell you, however, that I get a ton done in my focused stretches. And often do the 6 hours at one time. Moving to this method has made me at least twice as productive as before. Likely more, but twice for sure.
Dawud - We all need ‘flex time’, but I think you do really well with your discipline.
Different things work for different people obviously. It would be great if we all could find something that works for our ‘personalities’.
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