12 Ways to Save Time Online
The Internet has made life so much easier in so many ways. Think of all the time you save now that you don’t have to stand in line at the bank or the post office, or shop in real stores. So what do you do with all of that time that the Internet saves you? Chances are you spend it…on the Internet. Great as the Internet is, it can be quite a time sink. Here are some ways to take back your online time.
12. Set Filters on Your Email: Spam filters are great, and necessary, but you can also organize your email so that incoming messages automatically go to certain folders. This can save you from having to sift through the all the clutter to get to the messages you need to read right now. Also, take the time to unsubscribe to any autoresponder emails that you seldom read or are no longer interested in. You’ll reap the psychological benefits of seeing your unread messages cut in half!
11. Don’t Misuse Instant Messaging: Don’t get us wrong, if you’re not using chat, you should be. It can be a huge time-saver, since it’s faster than either emailing or calling someone. But make sure you’re not misusing it. How many times have you sat down to your computer to work, only to spend the first hour or so online catching up on incidentals with your friends? Learn to set the status on your chat client to Away or Busy so that you can get things done. If you need to be available to people, then let them know what you’re up to and have them send you an email instead. That way you can take care of it when you’re finished focusing on the task at hand.
10. Tabbed Browsing: Is there anyone who doesn’t multi-task when surfing the Web? You read in your Gmail that your grandmother’s birthday is coming up, so you open up Travelocity to check on plane tickets, and then use Google to find the perfect present. Since you live in the modern age and your short-term memory is likely shot, you need to keep each window handy so that you can refer back to verify dates and prices. This process would be nightmarish without tabbed browsing, and indeed used to be before most browsers got on board with the tabs in circa 2006. Personally, I like to have 7-10 tabs open at a time, which means I used to waste a lot of time being lost in a sea of browser windows. CTRL + T your way to browsing bliss.
9. Password Keeper Software: How often do you go back to a site that you had previously signed up on and can’t even remember your login, let alone the password you registered with? There is password keychain software out there that can help you with this problem. Your computer remembers your passwords to various sites for you, so you no longer have to waste time having the site email you your password and going through the whole process again. A safe, secure, reasonable choice is RoboForm at www.roboform.com.
8. Blog Digests: If you spend a lot of time online reading about the latest news in your niche, try saving time by finding one central blog that compiles the information for you. This way you can get the information you want in small, consumable bites instead of wasting time searching for it yourself. Can’t find a quality blog digest that compiles the information you’re interested in? Start one yourself!
7. Don’t Keep Your Email Open: While at first it may seem incredibly useful to have your email interrupt you with new message alerts, it can actually be very distracting and ultimately time-wasting. (Though, depending on your level of neurosis, it is better than you checking your email every five minutes.) Ideally you would set aside certain times of the day for handling email, and certain times where you focus on the projects at hand without any interruptions.
6. Set Time Limits and Parameters for Surfing: Living in the shadow of the Information Superhighway does not come without its challenges. Being able to instantly follow up on every random thought that pops into your head can turn a simple task into an endlessly branching digression. The key to not getting sucked in is to know what information you’re looking for and how long it should take you to find it. That way, if you find yourself getting sidetracked, you can rein yourself in and get back to work.
5. Save Your History: This helps you find websites you have been on before faster, and if you save your cookies, the sites will load faster. If you are a Google addict like we are, you can save your history to their data servers, making it accessible from any computer at any time. Just be certain to remember that as long as it is running, it can be accessible to Google (and their marketing teams) and potentially others on the Web easily as well.
4. Google SearchWiki: This is an ingenious tool from Google that allows you to customize your Google search results. You can do a search for something and then prioritize the search results according to your needs. You can add results or delete them, so the next time you do that search, only the items that are the most useful to YOU will appear. Pretty soon Google will be able to just know what you are thinking, but until then, there’s SearchWiki.
3. Micro-blogging: Don’t have time to write an entire blog post? Try micro-blogging. We’ve talked a lot about the micro-blogging site Twitter in these pages, but there are also others, like Tumblr, a blogging platform that doesn’t restrict word usage, and lets you share text, photos, quotes, links, music, and video from your browser, phone, desktop and email. Whichever you decide to use, the point is to stay connected to your readers or followers, and micro-blogging sites allow you to do this in the amount of time it takes to send a text message.
2. RSS Feeds: Why bother repeatedly surfing to all of your favorite sites to check for updates? Sign up for the sites’ RSS feeds and get the new content in your email inbox. Never waste time on duplicate visits again.
1. Bookmarks: Given the nature of the Internet, and the round-about ways that we often find websites with useful information, getting into the habit of bookmarking sites is vital. Take it a step further and create a categorical system for your bookmarks from the get-go, then when you accumulate thousands of bookmarks, you can narrow your search.
