Web Worker Daily

We all have to follow never-ending streams of information to varying degrees. Small business owners and web workers have to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in their markets and with their customers and clients. Writers and bloggers read for inspiration and to follow the latest trends.
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When I’m talking to people about social web sites, one of the questions I often get asked (usually just after the one about whether you actually need to join all the social networks, just because everyone else is) is “how do you keep up with everything?” People are often concerned about the amount of time it takes to read all of those tweets or updates, and wonder how in the world they will be able to keep up with everything, while still finding time for their work or hobbies. My answer sometimes surprises people: you don’t have to keep up with everything. Read the rest of this entry »

As a freelancer, I spend most of my time trying to manage information overload. Like Charles, I use spaces to quarantine focused work from other distractions, and I have some tricks for efficient RSS reading, creative uses of RSS to increase efficiency, and filtering techniques to help reduce the time I need to spend consuming information. Despite this obsession with efficiently gathering information, there are also times when I actively seek out information overload.

While a fire hose of notifications and feeds can be too distracting when I’m working on things for client, if I’m looking for inspiration for a new blog post or new venture of some sort, I want to see as much information as possible in the hope that something will catch my eye and provide the inspiration that I need.

Here are a few of my favorite tools for embracing information overload. Please beware that these tools are known to sap productivity and suck up precious hours that can never be regained! Use these techniques at your own risk. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve noticed that web workers tend to be particular about their communication tools. Twitter is usually for mass sharing, wikis or collab apps are for project discussions, while email is for almost everything else.

We all have our own preferences when it comes to communicating with others. I prefer email for general communication, instant messaging for answering quick questions, and my land line for long, personal conversations.

But not all people understand this – especially if they aren’t web workers. In fact, before I had a system in place, I felt like a doctor who was on call 24 hours a day. The good news is that there are some things we can do to get people to reach us through the channels we prefer.

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