Author: xdissent July 3rd 2009 5:14 pm
Keywords: GTD, Twitter
Twitter by nature is a stream of distractions. I personally never keep Twitter open and visible while I’m working because I know I’ll be too easily derailed from whatever I’m doing. If Life Hacker reported that a single email arriving in your inbox can cost you over a minute of mental recovery time, Twitter’s rapid-fire updates could prove to be literally stupefying. With that in mind, it’s probably a good idea to set aside a particular time of day to catch up on your tweets to prevent wasting too much time.
Once you’re committed to the idea that Twitter is a serious time waster, you can then use it to save a few more precious moments of your day that would otherwise be lost to internet distractions. For example, instead of subscribing to other distracting feeds and sites in your normal feed reader, downgrade them to twitter feeds and conglomerate your slacking. Most such sites mirror their feed on Twitter anyway, so catch up on all your time-wasters all at once – when you have the time to waste. Your reader can then be used for more serious items that might actually require your attention. Plus you’ll have the added bonus of missing a few posts during the day due to the sheer traffic on Twitter, which means less time wasted period. And really, you wouldn’t really miss another lolcat, would you?
Want to try it out? Follow @godbitesman, @thisisphotobomb, @notasdescribed, and of course, @failblog.