Every morning I read my news and blog sites. I check and answer my overnight email, turn on my IM clients, and finally get going. More often than not, an hour has passed. RSS, email, websites, and IM all take up a considerable part of my day – not to mention my daily browsing. Thus, todays QotD is:
What is your daily browsing routine?
(I am asking this validate that I am not alone)
I have about 60+ sites bookmarked. I use Safari to open them all in tabs and whip through them in under 25 minutes. When you look at it everyday, you get quick at seeing if something new (like this post) was added and whether it is of value. If it is, I scan it. If it is really good I e-mail the link to the page myself, print it out and digest it later when I have a break and the time.
I read the OneDegree email every day to see what’s new in Canadian Internet Marketing. Really!
I use this as a story for anyone that thinks email marketing more than once per month is too much. If there is enough new content for a daily email, and the audience wants it, it works fine.
I also get a many other marketing newsletters; ClickZ and Gerry McGovern I like and read regularly. So most of my news still comes from email and that triggers my browsing.
I always check our internal WIKI where I keep my daily planner and our current job information.
I never turn off my computer so my GTalk, Trillian and Skype are always on.
You are not alone Arieh. I purposely stay off IM for the first hour of my day. I open bloglines and scan/read my feeds. I can get through them pretty quickly if I’m focused with no distractions. Once i start answering email, IM, etc. I really slow down.
Arieh:
I am exactly like you, with the exception of turning on IM because it’s blocked and generally I end up taking longer than an hour!
Amen on keeping IM off for the first hour. I only sign into IM if I need to talk to someone right away.
Email scan, first. (This is sometimes tricky & time-consuming because I’m not a filter whiz. I actually check a couple of different programs (well, a local email client and one other web client). This is an area I could use some organizational training in. :)) Weed-out and respond.
Next, feed scan … ego feeds (yes, I admit it). Client ego feeds. Top tier blogs (which includes all my Canadian feeds plus a few others). Note ones I want to comment on later.
Internal (client) blog & wiki scan.
Comments on my blog scan. Note ones that need comments.
This definitely takes an hour (try to start well before the work day).
And then I try to set aside some time during the day to comment on other blogs plus answer less-urgent emails. I’m really trying to do the whole “if it will take you less than two minutes, just do it NOW” philosophy .. the problem comes when you have too many two-minute items.
Interesting QoTD, Arieh!
I can’t believe no one mentioned Techmeme. I hit that site a few times a day to see if the Internet has been pushed off it’s axis by something new while I was in a meeting.
Once I hit the office, I do a quick pass on email to make sure there are no fires. Then I scan feeds in a folder on Bloglines for key word feeds from Technorati, Google News, and Ice Rocket. I also take a look at employee and competitor blogs.
Personal surfing and industry reading come later in the day in sprints. I tag stuff into del.icio.us for future reference. I use popurls as my home page. I cruise the blogs on Canuck PR toolbar. And finally, I head back to Bloglines to cruise my other feeds.
I’ve taken a look at Google Reader, but haven’t switched from Bloglines.