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Last week, I published Must. Blog. More. Often and then my head exploded.
My head exploded because my mother joined Facebook and friended me, which led to her sending me "stuff". You know what I mean, right? I think she sent me an egg. Maybe a hatching egg. I don't know, I ignored it. Which is what I do with 99% of the things people send to me or invite me to. (I don't mean to hurt your feelings if you're someone who has sent me something, I just don't have time.)
I attempted a compromise with my mother. I told her I would accept her gifts, happily, but I wouldn't join her causes. She wasn't interested in compromise. It seems as though she expects me to, if not automatically JOIN her in her causes and her games, to at least consider doing so - not just click ignore without reading.
Mothers are a pain! They're so out of touch! They don't understand! OMG I feel like I'm 15. Any minute now, I'll get up and slam a bedroom door.
Seriously though, I just blogged about how hard it is to find time to blog and she wants me to play games on Facebook?
It is hard to squeeze in time for blogging and for commenting. And then when you toss in Twitter. Facebook. Linked In. My Feedreader. Kaboodle. Kirtsy. Stumbleupon.
Your head just exploded too, didn't it?
The list is endless or it can be endless if I allow it to be. Mostly, I stick to a schedule and don't allow myself to get sucked into the vortex that is social networking.
There was a time when I had dozens and dozens of communities that I tried to participate in. There was a time when I commented on dozens and dozens of blogs every day. That time is in the past. I have to manage my time wisely and while I might love to spend some time on a fun MEME or play with Zombies on Facebook or even nominate folks for #kindness, I can't do it all.
I have a schedule and I must stick to it. If I don't stick to it, well... Let's not think about that, I've learned to enjoy sleeping at night.
Here's my daily schedule. It fluctuates a little, depending on whether I fell behind the day before, how many phone conferences I have and whether I have to pick kids up at school or not. But, it's pretty close to this - every single day, seven days a week.
1) Flip through my inbox on my iPhone before I get out of bed (deleting all spam, moving stuff to folders that I've read but don't need to respond to.) I read my twitter replies from bed and I glance at the first couple of pages of my twitter stream to see if any news broke while I was asleep, (yes I get my news from Twitter, doesn't everyone?)
2) I load BlogHer, do any admin work that needs to be done. Load some ego feeds that I track every day to see if anyone is talking about BlogHer (or other topics that I'm super interested in.) I load Facebook and LinkedIn only if I have an email asking me to come and "do something". I do whatever it is that must be done (or quickly ignore/archive) and close both sites. I might answer a question, maybe leave a status update, or a reply on someone's that catches my eye (and of course I must now reply to my mother) as I'm about to close it.
3) I open my email on my laptop and answer whatever needs to be answered. Check my Outlook calendar to make sure I know what I'm supposed to be doing that day.
4) I will blog, somewhere. This is kind of new, started last week after I blogged about needing to blog more often. Anytime I finished a book the night before, this is the time period I would blog the book. I'm still doing that but now I've expanded it. If I don't have a book to blog, then I blog something else, somewhere else - even if I save to draft or change the date to publish in the future. It's been five days and
