How to simplify your social media routine

Leo Babauta, the creator of the blog Zen Habits, has written a piece in Mashable on how to simplify your social media routine. It's an insightful read. I believe most people find themselves in social media overload from time to time, and his post might come in handy. In my case, this is particularly true with twitter (though it is adictive :)). Leo's advise is,

1. Use simple tools to make the most of social media.
2. Focus on sending on high impact messages.
3. let go of the need to read everything.
4. Simplify and only use some social media.
5. Form close relationships with people who give you the most value, not everyone.
6. Manage your time wisely.


I particularly like #4, since most of the time I feel I need use every form of social media, instead of just staying with a few I like. At the moment, the ones I use the most are facebook and twitter, in that order. We'll see how that progresses over time.

The autofocus system - productivity tool for anyone

I have been a big fan of all personal productivity tools for a few years (also called productivity pr0n) and have consistently been trying different ones. Getting Things Done, Do It Tomorrow, and many sorts of different to-do lists as well as some personal variations that i created to get the systems to fit my schedule. All in all, it wasn't easy for me to get them to work and most left me with this sense of a growing to-do list that would never stop.

Do it tomorrow sounded great and simple, you write down everything you wanted to do the night before, and then you go and do it. At the moment, however, the company I worked in ran a culture full of meetings and stop-bys, which always made it hard to find time to do the things i had set myself to do, since you never know if someone would stop by and ask you to do something totally different.

Finally, though I liked the systems, I also dreaded the maintenance. Having journals, weekly reviews, will-do lists, etc. to be frank it was often much more than I wanted to. I realize that some people don't mind the extra time investment given the huge added task focus and productivity, but I did, for some reason, on Sunday nights, I just couldn't do that weekly review. Nonetheless, I always took it as part of the cost of being productive and felt I just had to learn to get into the habit of doing it.

But now i found a system that doesn't require all the maintenance and works like a charm. You only need a notebook, a pen and a highlighter. The autofocus system was created by Mark Forster (the same guy that created Do It Tomorrow), and it really creates the most simple, effective, productivity tools I have ever seen. It is very easy to use, very low maintenance, and keeps you laser sharp on your effectiveness. It really is one of those cases where "less is more".

I encourage everyone to try it. It is a great system and anyone can use without having to be a productivity addict or read a whole book about it. In some ways, it might look too simple to work, but trust me: it works, it just does.

http://www.markforster.net/autofocus-system/