Making the best of my valuable time?
I need to make the best of the time I have. I don’t think I am using my time in the most efficient manner possible.
I am running three major blogs and one of them has a podcast. That in itself isn’t too bad as two are on technology and one isn’t really, but still, the amount of information I have to keep up with to write posts and produce worthwhile content is quite large.
I keep up with tech because I am a geek and I enjoy tech. The Alternageek podcast topics vary widely so I can pick and chose from just about anything tech related. The downside is that it is so varied I have to keep up with A LOT of sources. I also have to try new hardware and software because we like to teach people how to do things. Preparing for the podcast is very time intensive.
Linuxchic.net is mostly linux related but I tend to include a helping of social networking stuff too. Some of the stuff from the podcast site overlaps with linuxchic.net but so does my audience and who wants to hear about that stuff twice. blog(a)gory is a blog to help people improve their blogging as well as link to blogging news. Unfortunately that is the site that falls by the wayside more often than not and I have been doing good to get a post out once every two weeks due to a lack of time to keep up with tips on writing. Producing content for blog(a)gory is the hardest one of all but writing is my hobby so I would love to dedicate more time to it.
On top of all that I have thousands of emails a week, thousands of feed posts in Google Reader every day, I have to keep up with comments, Twitter, and they sysadmining of the websites. I would like to think the sites admin themselves but I still have to keep the server patched, make sure backups are running, make sure links work, make sure logs are rotating, make sure the stats systems that read the logs are working, make sure the servers stay secure, and then I have the marketing and promotion pieces of the sites. They cost money just to keep running and even though I have been running linuxchic.net as a blog for almost 2 years and alternageek.com for 9 months, they still don’t even pay for the hosting, much less the work.
Oh, and don’t forget I have a fulltime job as a sysadmin where I support over 200 servers and those servers come before any of that other stuff. My most important job of all is the 4 kids I brought into this world and I sure can’t let them down. I wear a lot of hats and if I could afford to outsource some of the stuff and hire a marketing and finance dude/gal or a personal assistant I would definitely do it.
Sometimes, it can be a little overwhelming, but not too often. My biggest complaint is that I don’t have time to dedicate to producing more worthwhile content. I need to better manage the prep and research time so that I spend less time catching up and more time writing and podcasting. I could narrow down the feeds but then I am reducing the number of sources where I get my information and in doing so may not get to see every aspect of a story or news item and if I can’t report to my audience the most well rounded view possible then I am cheating them.
If you have any tips on managing content, resources, and time I would love to hear them. Likewise, if I find a better solution to my manic multitasking I will share that with you as well.