In trying to tackle overload and meltdown, two modes that seem to be part and parcel of our digital social communications, I tried to return to some common sense, something I think we’ve almost left behind as things move so quickly around us. Here’s what I’ve come up with, and I welcome your ideas as well.

1. Pare down. You do not need to join more than a few social networks to do most of what you need to do in your work. What are the core networks you use on a daily basis? Which ones can you live and work without? My shortlist: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook — not necessarily in that order. For my work, these three are critical. The rest I can ignore and not feel my work — or life — will suffer.
2. Turn off. How many pings do you get per day? How many are just “good to know” versus “mission critical?” And how many make you think “now why do I care about that?” Turn off the ones you don’t care about. Now turn off the ones that are just “good to know,” because I’m sure you cannot point to one that has totally changed your business or your life. Those are the ones you usually either come across anyway or someone you know and trust sends to you. Frankly, I’ve been shutting off all pings except for the ones that say “go there now” or “do this in 10 minutes.” Those are reminders, not invasions of my limited brain space.
3. Designate time. If you are checking your emails, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of your networks more than several times daily, you are being controlled by your impulses to check, check, check to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Trust me, you’ve missed a lot of things, but you’ve also missed nothing at all. If it isn’t your job to monitor the social mediasphere for a client, you’re falling into the trap of “always more and never enough.” Remember that we all survived quite well before tweets and updates. Be discriminating and methodical. Dawn Foster covered this topic in “Do You Need to Keep Up With Social Media.”
4. Filter Better. We’ve covered many filtering tools to bring the firehose of social information down to a more consumable flow including more recently “Filtering the Social Web With ShareThis” and “Stay Informed: Topic-based Reader Roundup.” But a good noise filtering system doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got the madness under control. Filtering tools can bring down the noise decibels a notch or two but often we tend to fill our filtering tools with a never-ending list of keywords and search terms, so the end result may be a bit more targeted but no less overwhelming. Narrow your searches terms to a few mission critical terms, and be more specific to cut through the clutter.
5. Step away. If you find yourself consumed with your social networks and endless updates, push the computer away and step away from your desk. Go for a walk. Have a conversation with someone face-to-face. Read a book or a magazine. Write a to-do list with pen and paper. Have a snack (healthy, of course). Eschew bits and bytes for tangible atoms.
6. Go cold turkey. If you’re really struggling with managing your information intakes, just stop. Go a few days completely disconnected. No cheating. Pay attention to life. Listen to people. Quiet the roar of the firehose. Don’t worry, you won’t just survive. You’ll thrive. Then return to the social web refreshed, with newfound perspective.

None of us will die without social media. But life could pass us by if we let it take over our lives.

How do you stop the social media madness in your work and life?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Social Media in the Enterprise

Photo by Joel Washing

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how I was experiencing side project overload, and based on the number of comments, I am not the only one.

In that post, I said that “I’m starting to experience serious side project bloat resulting in personal overload. I’ve let my side projects take over to the point that I’m having a hard time making room for my paying client work.” I also offered a few suggestions for managing it: the “one thing” policy, combining activities, and finding co-leads. There are also some really great suggestions from other people in the comments.

The tips in my previous post work well for me, but I found that they weren’t quite enough. I needed more structure. I thought that you deserved a follow up post with more information about other changes I have been making to more effectively manage my time.

I’ve put in place a new structure for prioritizing and tracking the time that I spend on various activities. I’ve lumped them into three categories with daily target times to spend on each category along with a prioritized list of activities within each category. Here is an example:

Category: Work that generates revenue (my highest priority category)

Activities (in priority order):

1. Client work
2. Other paid work (like WebWorkerDaily posts)
3. White papers or training classes

Here’s the logic behind it. The problem that I need to solve is that I spend too much time on side projects and attending business development events (meetups, user groups, etc.) while things that would generate revenue in the longer term get put aside with no time to work on them.  I have a certain number of hours allocated to this category per day, which forces me to work on Nos. 2 and 3 if I don’t have enough client work for the number of hours specified. I’ve also intentionally set this number to be slightly over my typical client workload, which also helps encourage me to work on those longer-term efforts.

I also have a category for proactive business development, which is focused on those business development activities that I have a tendency to put off. Activities like proactive outreach, meetings with potential clients, and proposals are included in this category. I’ve intentionally excluded business development events from counting toward my time allocation for this category, since I already attend too many of those.

Right now, I’m managing all of this in a spreadsheet so that I can visually see what I need to do and track it, but I will need to move to a more robust application.

What is your favorite application to track your time over multiple criteria (clients, categories, etc.)? What other tips do you have for making sure that you work on the highest priority activities?

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Photo by Josh Bancroft

People tease me that my hobby is starting user groups. I also organize big events for geeks in my spare time just for fun. I’m one of those people who notices the gaps and jumps in to fill them. When I wish Portland had an event, user group, or other gathering that doesn’t currently exist, I feel compelled to start it. I also enjoy meeting with other people to talk about common interests, learn new things, or help others who need a little guidance (the way others have helped me over the years). All of these activities are amazing and fun, but they are side projects that take up valuable time.

While I enjoy all of these activities, I’m starting to experience serious side project bloat resulting in personal overload. I’ve let my side projects take over to the point that I’m having a hard time making room for my paying client work. Part of my reason for starting my own consulting business was to give me more personal flexibility to manage my work and my side projects rather than having my hours managed by an 8 to 5 work day schedule. I have many other web worker friends who have made similar choices, and most of us seem to struggle with balancing our time between paying work and the side projects that are our passions.

There are a few ways to create a better balance between work and side projects.

A friend of mine recently implemented a “one thing” policy to better manage his time. He only does one non-paying “thing” a day during normal work hours. For example, if he already had coffee with me, he won’t have tacos for lunch with Todd.

I have started combining activities and asking people to join me at events like Beer and Blog if they want to talk to me or chat about side projects. It helps me combine those informal meetings with other events that I am already attending.

I also have started finding co-leads for anything that I decide to start, which helps spread the organizing load a bit. I am also going to start cutting a few things and doing a better job of resisting the urge to start new things along with saying no to more activities.

What are your tips and tricks for managing the balance between side projects, fun activities, and paying gigs?

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How many social networks and Web 2.0 tools are enough? I clearly don’t know when enough is enough. What if the one I don’t join is the one that will truly change my life/work/future?

1. Checked Twitter. This is like my first cup of coffee, standing by the watercooler, with my Twitterfriends.

2. Went to Upcoming. I was curious what kinds of conferences my friends had listed so I could consider attending a few this year.  Ended up adding a dozen new friends to my account.

3. Looked at Facebook. I wanted to see who had RSVP’d to my Second Life event and a real world event I’m promoting. I also used Evite for the real world event because the potential attendees aren’t all on Facebook.

4. Fiddled around with Netvibes. I’m still trying to make Netvibes my portal to all my email accounts, important industry news and posts on favorite blogs. Still not integrated into my workflow as I hoped.

5. Posted to HelloTxt. While I also have a Ping.fm account, I’m still partial to HelloTxt for broadcasting messages to relevant social networks. In this case, I was promoting my Second Life event.

6. Posted to my mommy blog. I hadn’t updated in quite a while. My personal blogs tend to suffer as I put al of my blogging energy into my pro-blogging gigs.

7. Added a few contacts on Plaxo Pulse. I’m still on the fence about the value of Plaxo, but it does send me a notice each time someone I know joins and makes it easy for me to connect with them.

8. Accepted some LinkedIn invitations. After all these years, I still love LinkedIn. It isn’t flashy and doesn’t have all the flexibility of other social networks, but my contacts are real (friends or colleagues vs. “friends” and “connections,” high-quality and willing to connect me to other high-quality contacts.

9. Checked on my Meetup Groups. I’m still paying a fee to host Meetup groups and am using it for personal and professional meetings. The site has been helpful with organizing real world events.

10. Posted to BizNik. I’m looking to do more business in Seattle because it is only a 3-hour drive from Alaska. BizNik is a vibrant social network for the self-employed, and I’ve joined the Seattle Community. This time I posted a query looking for a business plan writer for a client of mine.

11. Reviewed my Filtrbox results. In a constant effort to filter down the deluge of industry news, I’m using a combination of Google Alerts, Filtrbox and Snackr. And still…a deluge.

12. Added some friends on 12seconds.tv. Just 12 seconds for a video? Harder than Twittering. But starting to use it to promote a new video microblog I’m producing with a friend. About wine. Sure, it is for business.

13. Uploaded images and video to Flickr. Attended a political rally and did a little on-the-spot documentation. Put everything on my Flickr page to share. Posted some of it to Twitter and one of my blogs.

14. Synced my iPod Touch. Having trouble getting some apps to work and getting videos to play. Syncing a few times to try to fix it.

All in a day’s work. And this is only a small glimpse.

How many social networks and Web 2.0 tools are enough? I think the main criteria for managing your social media should be asking yourself:

• Do you get tangible, frequent benefits that translate into dollars?
• Do they help you work more efficiently or network more efficiently?
• Do they enhance your work and productivity or detract from it?
• Do they reduce your feeling of isolation and connect you to the people and information you need to work better, faster, smarter?

As long as you are answering yes to all or most of the above, you should be okay. For now.

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