I spend close to 10 - 12 hours a day on the internet. Mainly because I’m a full time freelancer and constantly browsing around for the next job. This blog and few other sites/blogs I run are my other full time obsessions as well.

So in order for me to stay organized I am writing down, for me and you, 5 Ways To Organize Your Life Online -

1. Start Up - In my review of some online RSS readers a few days back I looked at netvibes and pageflakes. I thought to myself to get set up with one of these services so that I could read all my RSS feeds at once plus look at the latest news. I’ve gone with netvibes, even though pageflakes has a better RSS reader, and hopefully that will make starting my day a little faster rather than opening up multiple tabs in Firefox. If you haven’t done so yourself I suggest you also get yourself set up with one of the start page services.

2. Email - If you check your email every 10 mins, STOP! First of all you don’t have to reply to an email instantaneously give it some time - it’s not an IM conversation! I’ve been thinking how I want to streamline my multiple emails and I think I will be using Mozilla’s Thunderbird to do so - since I can just shut it down and not be notified when I’m busy. If I used my startpage to configure my emails I would end up looking at it every 30 mins and then just get caught up with reading again when I should actually be working.

3. Blogging - Yeah I’m slowly but surely moving into making blogging a part time income stream, enough to supplement what I earn today from freelancing and my other affiliate sites. I’ve figured the best times of day to write a post is around 8:00 A.M to 10:00 A.M and then again from 3:00 P.M to 5:00 P.M.

These two timings are crucial for RSS readers and office going folk, as most are, since these times are when they are most likely to read up before getting to work and right before getting off work. So let them start their day with you and end it as well. Of course you can post as much as you like.

If you live in Europe or other parts of the world and your main audience is in the U.S, set to publish your post for when the U.S wakes up.

4. Work - If you work as a freelancer and see yourself not getting enough work for the day or for the rest of the week, relax the world will still be around after that. I find myself completely devoid of any work sometimes and that’s when I start to get the uh-oh’s like, what am I gonna do? After doing this for almost a year and pulling through I’ve stopped worrying and instead now concentrate on honing my skills more and learning something new - or see No.3.

If you have a full time job and have a computer at your desk that is internet connected without restrictions, be careful what you browse at work - someone is always watching. Don’t let your online life (read social profiles, personal blogs) interfere with your professional one.

5. Social - With the literally hundreds of social community sites out there and with the ease of registering for them it’s hard to keep track of what you signed up with and didn’t, especially if you don’t remember your password. So only sign up because you really want to and if you really plan on using the service, just don’t become another statistic.

There are other ways to become statistics.

I hope these tips help you, I think I can get myself more organized and spend more time with my family if I follow them. The trick is to get started and then it becomes routine, like your afternoon tea.

If you have any tips on how you organize your life online, share them with us. My dear RSS readers that means you too…and I know you’re out there.

Technorati Tags: get organized, rss, social community sites, work, freelancing

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.