
Wasting time on social networks
Twitter and Facebook are often described as a productivity drain. However, that depends on what you are doing. For website owners they can be an important method of engaging with users. For designers and developers they are an excellent way of staying up-to-date with web innovations and the web community. Social Networks don’t have to be damaging to productivity. They can be beneficial to your job. Both Twitter and Facebook are brilliant for:- Community building
- Customer support
- Getting feedback
- Brand building
- Finding answers
- Discovering educational content
Search and respond
It’s great to spend time interacting with your followers. However, some of the best discussions are with those who have not actively engaged with you, but are talking about you or your site in someway. When you find it hard to focus on more productive work, take the time to search on social networks and the web to find out what people are saying about you. If you find people saying complimentary things, take the time to thank them. It’s amazing how a thank you can turn a happy user into an evangelist for your brand.
Sit back, relax and read
With the web advancing at a mile a minute we have to keep our skills up-to-date and be aware of the latest innovations. We do this by reading blogs, subscribing via RSS and following people who share good content on social networks. Unfortunately there is so much good content out there we miss a lot and even what we do see we don’t have time to read immediately. We inevitably end up adding content to a service like Instapaper or Readability. This supposedly allows us to save a post to read when we have more time. In reality we rarely find the time and our reading list grows ever longer.
Watch something
There are some amazingly inspiring, helpful and informative video out there. Whether conference talks or screencast tutorials, there is no shortage of material ripe for procrastination. The trick with video content is having it ready when you feel the need to procrastinate. You need a watch list to sit alongside your reading list.
Review your website
Instead of surfing Youtube for the latest Ze Frank video, or looking up football results on BBC sports, try visiting your own website for a change. We don’t really look at our own website. We may quickly visit it to grab a piece of information or check some new functionality, but we don’t explore it as a user would. Next time you are struggling to settle down to work, have a look around your own site. Go from page to page making a note of any issues you find. Try completing key user tasks and write down problems you encounter. The idea is not to fix these problems (after all that would be far too much like hard work) but rather to make a note of them so they can be fixed later.
Play and experiment
We all know that children learn through play. Adults are no different. For those of us involved in running and building websites, play and experimentation are essential components of the learning process. A developer may play with a different coding approach, a designer with a new jQuery plugin. Website owners may play with social media tools or a new analytics package. Whatever the case, play provides an opportunity to experiment with new stuff that can later be applied to your job.
Have a ‘low energy’ list
We all keep a task list. Normally we are happy working through the urgent or important items of that list. However, as we have already established, there are times when we just don’t have the energy. This is when we start procrastinating. Even with good intentions and this article to help, you will find yourself wasting time because you are just too tired to come up with anything better to do. When we procrastinate, we stop thinking. We are just too tired. So, don’t make yourself think. Plan ahead. Keep a list of low energy tasks that you can do when you start procrastinating. That way you avoid having to think of tasks when you are tired and can just pick from an existing list.Read Next
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