Real Time Web and Productivity – Till Death Do us Apart
Welcome to the new age Internet where everything is real-time. Be it about conversation with your friends to awareness about ‘what they are doing’, to what’s happening across the world (was youtube down for 7.3 minutes?).
This is an era where attention span is an underrated word. Each and every second, megabits of information is fighting for your attention and the challenge, to me is not about the real time web, but how does one cope with all the information, and still stay productive.
New web needs behavioral change and one needs to acquire new skills/behavior to cope up with the same. Till I find out the perfect answer, here is what I have done to stay productive:
Metered Web
I can stay online all the time, get ‘real time’ tweets from the world, talk to people all the time and in the process, postpone the important tasks for later.
Not anymore. What I have done is I kicked my ISP’s a&& (Sify anyways sucked big time) and started using USB Internet, where I can access on-demand (at a much better speed) and most importantly, all my usage is metered.
I am actually tracking my usage of the web, in order to understand how much of data I am consuming. Most importantly, I am ‘aware’ of what exactly is the ‘demand’ for my on-demand usage (i.e. do I really need to check my email every 10 minutes? do i need to really see the new blog posts in the feed reader every 5 minutes?).
I have actually started asking myself these questions before I plug-in the device.
The idea behind metered web was not to monitor cost, but to change my behavior towards the way I was using the web (frankly, it’s a new behavior towards my usage of web).
Cloud vs. Desktop
Less of cloud, more of desktop. I have been using online feed readers (Google Reader and Feedly), online office suite (both Zoho and Google) and lately realizing that I do not need to be ‘so informed’ of what’s really happening in the world (attending nirvana?).
Instead, what I need is better sync and have resorted to desktop (FeedDemon, Google Gears et al) more than cloud. Having said that, my source of data will still be on the cloud, but I will be using more of desktop and syncing software.
Say NO!
Earlier I covered how Manage Information/ Feed overload – Useful Tips for your Soul and am going to add more to the list. For instance,
- Unsubscribe to blogs who publish partial feeds (heck! if your content is so awesome, it will anyways reach me via social media channels)
- No Mobile Internet – adds to the propensity to check ‘what’s happening’.
Acquire New Skills
In the new new world of real time, one needs to change the way he/she works.
You’d need a lot more self-discipline than ever before – be it about checking emails or getting into casual conversations, being aware of ‘what exactly are you doing” (of course, without broadcasting to the world) is the need of the hour.
Be it about ditching ‘online to-do’ structured software to using notepad for managing ToDos, one needs to acquire new skills to stay productive.
How are you coping up with the real time web?
Next – To-Do software I use.
Nice
Well.. to be frank, i been using internet from past 8 years, gone through the depth of it and now moving like a duck.
Well see there are many things that we need to do on daily basis, this is the process i do
1) Prepare a To do List paper and carry with me, according to priority of tasks i will complete the list by the end of day, until and unless in rare cases few will be postponed due to the other person problem.
2) I only subscribe to the best feeds, where i can read, analyze. Knowledge is endless what i can put in my brain that much i can feedup my self
3) and finally before doing any thing i will ask my mind ” IS IT NECESSARY ”
Thats it, people just try your self before doing any thing ask your mind
” IS IT NECESSARY ”
Thanks & Regards
Sai Pothuri
” Thats it, people just try your self before doing any thing ask your mind
” IS IT NECESSARY ” – That’s the most imp. qn to ask! Thanks for sharing that.
its ok no probs
[...] Real Time Web and Productivity – Till Death Do us Apart [...]
Timely and useful post.
I think the age old time management concept of ‘immediate but not important’ vs ‘not immediate but important’ holds true even in the real time web. Only it has become more important in the real time web as there has been an explosion in ‘immediate but not important’ tasks and they have become easier and attractive as well.
Another way to cope with the real-time ceaseless flow of information is to rely on a service that keep track of it and organized it in a way you can easily find and retrieve what’s important to you afterwards. I work for a startup called Silentale which stores and consolidates your conversations from across twitter, facebook, emails, etc. into a searchable archive. In the meantime, it also combines your different address books and friend lists (incl. LinkedIn) to build a 360° view of your contacts. This way, you can search your conversations across all sources at one time, and you can also see what you exchanged with a specific person, wherever and whenever it happened. If you or one of your readers is interested in trying out the service (we are in private beta), just send me a tweet at @lbret.