How to be more productive while you're online.

Browsing the web and checking out your favorite social networking site can be a good way to pass the time. But what about when you don't have enough time? You certainly wouldn't want to waste the few hours you have left to prepare that report or do your homework and the PC's become such an important part of out lives that we can hardly work without it. At times like these, your most visited websites can become a bit of a distraction and your IM client certainly doesn't aid your concentration with it's noisy alerts. In this post, I hope to share with you some basic things you might find to be useful when you want to get something done quickly.

First of all, if you need to be online to do your work, say, if you need to check up on some facts, right down exactly what you need to accomplish on a piece of paper and keep it near you.
This will help you to decide if what you are currently looking at on the screen is relevant or not. If it is, great! If it isn't, search for something more suitable.

Ah.. that bring me to the next pointer. Searching.

Searching through the millions of web pages on the net today would be beyond impossible withoug search engines. (Don't worry... I'm not going to tell you how to use google or yahoo.. You presumably arrived at this blog via one of those... ). However, for all the features and tricks that google and yahoo (and other search engines) offer, sometimes the information you're looking is just hard to find.. or it simply just doesn't exist on a web page.
You can save a lot of time by using the search customization features in the seach engine.

Check these links for google
Google search basics.
Google more search basics

and yahoo help documents.
yahoo search basics
Yahoo Search Tips

You may not not know everything in those help files.. and in this case, what you don't know may bite you. ;-)

Sometimes, like I said before, the info you are searching for just may not exist. In that case, after and ONLY AFTER a few attempts at using different search keys.. .give up. yes.. give up. If you've phrased your search in different ways and didn't find what you were looking for then it's probably not there and you'd be wasting your time looking for it. Try to find a book that will provide the answers.

Your browser is your friend.
Know the ins and outs of your preferred browser. A few keyboard shortcuts can always come in handy... Other features built into your browser may also help you. For example, Firefox's "awesomebar" is great tool. I don't use other browsers (yes.. that was an advertisement for firefox ;-) so I don't know about other browsers. One other thing.. If you find what you are looking for, you might find it useful to bookmark the page. You never know when you'll need it again and a bookmark can make the difference between hours and minutes.

I also find that switching your browser to full-screen mode allows you to read more of the page without scrolling.

What not to do with your browser.
(yeah.. I just said your browser was your friend... but you have to keep it happy.)
First off, don't go opening tabs for every link you see. From experience, I find that that can be extremely distracting. Looking for the correct tab can sometimes be frustrating... and frustration is bad when you are pressed for time no? Then again, opening just a few of the MOST IMPORTANT links can also save time. Just make sure they are absolutely essential.

Help your PC... and it will help you.
Don't open more applications than you need. If you are making notes from wikipedia, all you need is your word processor and your browser. Exit the IM client and shut down the media player. For one thing, it help you concentrate and it also lessens the burden on your PC. If you run a modestly fast PC (like I do) extra applications can reduce speed and on rare occasion cause instability. You wouldn't want to loose everything you just worked on would you?

Have a few good websites.
Make a list of two or 3 websites which you would normally find interesting. Sometimes, you might find what you are looking for on them.

There.. Hope that helped someone.