Twitter: World’s Most Efficient Time Waster
| December 28th, 2008We’re always looking for tools. Things that will help us expand our networks and obviously increase our bottom lines. There are many tools out there but none in my opinion has the same propensity for waste as it does productivity as Twitter.
Twitter has expanded my network of good friends and increased the exposure of my blog forum / directory in a major way. For that I am extremely grateful and glad I found the network. I also find on any given day the people I’m chatting with routinely are totally different and of a larger scope then I could of ever imagined before I became officially addicted to Twitter. Can’t say I’m shocked I was already addicted to the internet so now twitter is just the next step.
The problem with twitter is that it’s constantly changing / evolving. That’s good but also bad for the productivity of it’s users. Something new is always happening and being shared. This “source” of news and entertainment is also incredibly hard to walk away from; it’s even harder to try and moderate. Have you said I’ll check my stream and found yourself an hour or so later hitting refresh compulsively. Even once you finally “rip yourself away” you get an email when someone sends you a direct message (sadly it’s usually an offer for some free gift 
) or a new friend request pops up and you’re back where you started!
Image via Wikipedia
I think in order to get the “most” out of twitter it’s not to use it the “most” but to time it out like cigarettes. Yes I just compared to two. With cigarettes if you have to many in too short a time they totally lose their appeal, flavor and purpose. It feels like I’m just smoking air. Same with twitter. If you use twitter for 2 hours a day and it’s all in one shot you’re not getting the most of it. Just lot’s of hot air! What you want to do is space out your usage like you would a cigarette. (That is if you’re unfortunate enough to be a smoker).
By spacing out twitter usage to say ~20 minutes 6 times a day ~ 1-2 hours apart you’ll not only be “filled in and satisfied” but you’ll also have new relevant tweets to go through; new friends to meet and probably something new on your mind worth sharing. If you look at it all in that one 2 hour block there will probably be a lot of stale time where you hit refresh or wait for a reply that just isn’t coming yet.
I was just playing on twitter and realized I was experiencing diminishing returns for the time I was spending. This wasted time could / should be used to maintain some of my current projects and write like I’m doing now. The old saying “everything in moderation” rings especially true for twitter. Use it; love it, let it change your life both online and offline but realize it’s just a tool with a purpose. Don’t become overly obsessed or preoccupied with it.
This post just took about 5-10 minutes or so. How many bloggeries have you potentially wasted on twitter when you should log off but just continually putter around as there is always something new that could occupy your interest?
Keep working from home; especially for yourself!
Rob
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I agree with you. I’m also addicted, and I’ve only been on Twitter for about two weeks. I’ve been amazed at how quickly people find you. And then I wonder why people follow you who don’t even know you. And then I look to see who they are. And then I want to address people’s questions. And then there are contests you can answer. Yes, it’s addictive alright.
I’ll try to your pacing method and see if that works. Otherwise, my 2009 will be the least productive year ever until I realize Twitter has to go. And that would be really sad.
Twitter ID: bikelady
Pacing is needed. I love twitter and use it all the time but I definitely find myself hanging on it more than i should. I mean using twitter to the extent that other more necessary projects which are part of your online jobs are getting pushed off. Not a good scene. Then again I’m also not much of a moderator
.
Thanks for the comment and see you on twitter of course!
might as well have just gone all out and compared it to crack … which is also best in regularly scheduled short intervals. use too much all at once, end up having a seizure and spending two pointless (and crackless) weeks in detox.
lol @caustic definitely another way of describing it. I’ve never used crack so I can’t comment further lol!
That said I have seen it repeatedly being compared to crack.
Ha Ha Ha this is SO me! In fact if I wasnt so busy being obsessed with refreshing my tweet feed i cldve been the one to write this post!!
In fact Im not even linking to my blog cos Im embarrassed by how little I’ve written since I started tweeting 3 months ago *walk of shame* 2009 will be a diff story though cos I recently implemented twitter 4X a day 10 min each .. not that I lasted beyond day 2 of new regimen bahaha!
if the same time was invested in other social network like squidoo it will be better and more effective
I’m at my computer a lot - I’ve found using something like tweetdeck helps - the posts stream through with little effort on my part. If I only checked twitter a couple times a day I would have missed the deadline completely for getting my blog submitted in your directory. Twitter is so immediate that there is a sense that responding to someone even a couple of hours later is not quick enough sometimes.
Its true that twitter is just time waster, and get time more than irts benefits . Else hanging on twitter, Facebook can give better results.
Hi David,
You really think facebook is better? I think twitter wins hands down just it’s addictive so it’s easy to spend more time then you should.
Twitter is the increasing activity in seo, and its benefits are more than its time
Twitter is not a time waster , you can get huge volume of traffic from Twitter
Er.. that’s why Rob called it the Efficient time waster
It can very easily turn into a time sucker without any benefits if you’re not careful. If you use it properly though, yes, it’s a good traffic generator.