The time drain. You’ve all heard about it. The truth is that it DOES exits.
It is not a fictional, scary monster. It’s real and if you don’t recognize it happening then you are doomed to be consumed by it.
I spend a lot of time on Twitter, on Facebook and reading blogs. All of these things are vital to my role. All of these things have a profound ability to impact my business.
However, the usage of each of these sites must be monitored, self-monitored. Like email, these channels never sleep. I have decided that the state of always-on is distracting, something that I can hardly afford given my natural state of attention deficit. I have decided to schedule my Twitter and Facebook time into my day as I would anything else. Much like email, I will respond when notified, but having it on my screen at all times has reached the tipping point and I’m afraid if I don’t get a hold of it now it will get out of hand.
To be clear, this change in routine is borne out of necessity:
I now have a strong enough following on Twitter that I could feasibly spend all day on Twitter. This was not always the case.
I now have enough client work that, at times, Twitter no longer supplements but instead displaces my work. This was not always the case.
I have enough new business tasks and follow-up calls and internal work that there simply is not enough time in the day to accomplish it all. Obviously I must prioritize. This was not always the case.
There was a point in time where I could spend much more time on Twitter and LinkedIn, searching for new leads and engaging in conversations. I now have responsibilities that take precedence, so I must take my own medicine and step into the shoes of my clients, who must find the time to engage in these new channels.