Dec 16, 2008 Posted in Marketing Ideas, Random Thoughts

Golden Advice for Information Junkies

It is no secret that we’re living in the information age and we’re bombarded with data everywhere we turn. Good news-bad news, funny and sad stuff, TV, radio, videos, audios, blog posts, press releases – the list goes on and on.

Some people may think that all of this is good but the fact is that it is a distraction. I am an information junkie. I admit it. More specifically, I’m a marketing information junkie. I subscribe to newsletter lists, blog feeds, even offline mailing lists just to see what everyone is doing.

Recently, I did a little experiment based on a great video I found within this site. You have to join the mailing list to get it (it isn’t on YouTube) but it is well worth it.

Basically, I wrote down the five things that were most important to me. Then for a week, I tracked every activity I did throughout every day. After the week was up I looked at all the tasks I was doing and determined which ones were directly related to achieving my most important goals.

Want to guess the results? Yep, I was totally off-focus and I was wasting a whole lot of time.

Immediately, I unsubscribed from ALL the mailing lists and RSS feeds I was on and re-subscribed to only those I really was interested in using a Gmail account. I now only check that email on the weekends so I’m not distracted during the week.

You would not believe the difference these two little changes have made.

Now, I’m only working on those things that move me towards my goals. The things I like to do, I do myself. Those that I don’t enjoy doing or that I’m not good at, I outsource. The result is that I’m spending my time on things that I like doing so life is more enjoyable, all the things I need to do are getting done and I’m heading in the right direction to get the things that are most important to me.

Lynda explains it better than I can. I could rip off her video and show it for you here but that would not be ethical nor a good use of my time. You can see the video after you sign up here.