5 Ways to Make Your Web Surfing More Productive

This is a guest post by Heather Johnson. If you would like to write for us, just drop a line via the Contact form.

Many of us could certainly manage our time more wisely while online. Bloggers in particular are surfing the Web daily and can be easily distracted from more important work. There are many ways to curb your wayward surfing and streamline your Internet experience, however, starting with the following five:

1. Limit Distracting Sites – If your well-meaning attempt to get some work done results in hours lost on YouTube and celebrity gossip blogs, then it’s time to limit those sites. You may not realize how much time you waste on certain sites, which is why a program like 8aweek is so handy. 8aweek is free to install and will track how long and how often you visit your favorite sites.

2. Bookmark Wisely – Not only should you bookmark your favorite sites for quicker surfing, you need to organize your bookmarks wisely. Once your bookmarks start adding up, then it’s time to organize different folders and, from time to time, you need to remove any links you don’t visit anymore.

3. Use an RSS Reader – There are many free news aggregators to choose from, including Google Reader and Bloglines. Rather than visiting all of your favorite blogs individually, you should gather them all into one spot. Then, you can visit your reader once or twice a day at a scheduled time. This will save you a tremendous amount of time.

4. Limit Social Networking Memberships - There is no question that social networking is essential for bloggers. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Bebo can help you connect with your blogging community and potential readers. However, you shouldn’t feel obligated to belong to every one! In fact, that’s a huge time waster. What good is all that networking when you don’t have time to actually blog?

5. Use an Email Alert Program – Are you wasting time by compulsively checking your email, only to find an empty inbox? An email alert program, such as Gmail Notifier, will let you know when a message appears in your inbox. This alert will pop up on your taskbar, where it remains long enough for you to see who it is from and what the subject line is.

By heeding the advice above, you will save precious hours that could be devoted to more practical tasks. Don’t get sucked into the time vortex that is the Internet.

Heather Johnson is a freelance business, finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor at Business Credit Cards, a site for best business credit cards and best business credit card offers.

Daniel Scocco on March 25, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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3 Responses to “5 Ways to Make Your Web Surfing More Productive”

Joe Morrison on March 31st, 2008 9:17 am

Hi.. It was a nice post and a good read to get along.. First of all i would like thank for that..

Keep posting some thing more related to such concern.. Great Work.. Keep the flag High…

Cheers!!!