Hannes Johnson dot Com » Time Management

How To Read More Without Spending Any Extra Time Reading

Hannes Johnson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:51:22 +0000

I’ve been using this cool tool called Instapaper by Marco Arment for a few weeks now and it has helped me read articles that I probably wouldn’t have without this handy tool.

What does it do?

Well, according to the FAQ “Instapaper facilitates easy reading of long text content.” It does this through a “Read Later” bookmarklet that you add to your browser. Then, next time you find an article online that you don’t have time to read you just click “Read Later” and it adds it to your Instapaper list. This is not a brand new idea per se… I’ve been using bookmarks for a similar purpose – created a specific folder for “Read later”, “Read ASAP” – I even started categorizing them – splitting them into sub-folders “January 2008″, “February 2008″ – but even those sub-folders just filled up and I only read a small percentage of the articles I bookmarked. I’ve also tried using del.icio.us and tagging articles with “toread” – it’s the same, I only check out a small part of the article I tag (although the tags “towatch” and “tolisten” have been more useful – perhaps because I don’t use them as frequently). I even tried out a Firefox add-on called Read it Later – but that doesn’t work any better than the bookmarking folder system.

Why is Instapaper so great?

The thing that makes Instapaper special is that I can easily access my “read later” list through my cellphone – which is excellent if I have to wait anywhere – waiting for a ride, waiting in line at the supermarket, etc… Or if I’m anywhere else away from a computer and nothing else to do ;)

Check out Instapaper here.

What do you think? Will Instapaper help you read more stuff? Do you often come across an article that you want to read but you don’t have time to read it right then?

How To Trick Yourself Into Blogging More Frequently

Hannes Johnson — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:49:36 +0000

I know, it’s a cliché… but I’ve been busy with other things ;) And it looks like my brilliant trick isn’t quite bullet-proof – although I have dozens of drafts in WordPress, another dozen of Notepad documents and also physical notepads with half-finished blog posts… But somehow I couldn’t find the time to finish these posts.

So I’m going to try a new trick – write really short blog posts. Inspired by the concept of microblogging I think I might be more willing to write short blog posts – rather than having to worry about writing insightful 1000+ words blog posts with research, graphs and the whole shabang ;)

Well, in microblogging a post can be anywhere from one sentence (with maybe a link or two) to a few paragraphs. So it’s pretty flexible. These short posts, or microposts, should take less than 30 minutes to write – well, they should probably take less than 5 minutes but you shouldn’t have to worry about time restraints. The idea is to just get the idea out there as quickly as possible – it doesn’t even have to be grammatically correct, you can just edit the typos later on – when your visitors point them out ;)

But sometimes when you start out writing a micropost you might get more and more ideas while writing and you’ll be inspired to write a full-length post – and that’s definitely a good thing :)

It might be appropriate to set up Asides to handle these microposts – to separate them from the “real” posts. I might also consider using any of the microblogging services out there to write short posts (and maybe import them into this blog).

The only problem with short posts like that is that it’s not so easy to add in-content AdSense ads when the content is only 2 sentences ;)

This post is kind of a micropost – I wrote it fairly quickly (although it took more than 5 minutes) and only read it over once. What do you think – is this a short post or a normal post? Maybe it’s just somewhere in the middle…

What do you think of the concept of microblogging? Do you think it could help you blog more frequently (which means more content on your blog = better chance of ranking in the search engines for cool keywords)? Are you going to try writing short posts every now and then? Oh, yeah, of course – even though I’m going to try writing more short posts it doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing full-length posts that I put a lot of work in :)

Also, in short posts I might not explain everything in detail – so that’s an excellent opportunity for the readers to post comments and ask questions.

Don’t Have Enough Time To Write A New Blog Post?

Hannes Johnson — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:40:30 +0000

I don’t know about you but sometimes I just don’t have enough time to write a whole blog post. Writing a post/article can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours (with research, reading it over a few times for review, fixing typos, etc…) and sometimes I have a ton of other stuff to attend to. You might not have enough time to write a whole post at once… but have you heard the saying/joke “How do you eat an elephant? – One piece at a time”? Well, that can be applied to a lot of things – including blogging. So when you get a good idea, a good sentence or just have a few spare moments you should write down a word or two.

I’ve started using “drafts” (unfinished blog posts) more and more. All the major blog platforms have a “draft” feature – it’s usually a button that says “Save as draft” or similar. In WordPress when you’re writting you should see to the right under “Post Status” you can select Published, Draft or Private. So, to save your post as draft just press “Save” and make sure “Draft” is selected. Then the post will not be published on your blog and you can continue working on your post later on.

You hopefully can manage to spend 5-10 minutes per day (or whenever “the spirit comes over you”) and write a couple of sentences, random thoughts or just a few keywords about your topic. Then, before you know it you got a whole blog post :) You might even create a collection of drafts that will hopefully soon turn into valuable content for your blog. I’ve actually got several drafts saved in my blog right now just waiting for me to add the finishing touch (but sometimes the last 20% can take the longest time).

Also, if you don’t have access to the internet you can just write on a text file on your computer (I use Notepad a lot for these kind of things). But if you don’t even have your computer close to you, you can just write it down on a piece of paper – and you should always have something to write on when you leave the house. I’ve actually written a few blog posts while riding the bus to school – a great time saver. Another trick is to leave yourself voice mail or write some notes on your cell phone if you can.

How about you? Do you use any tricks to write as many blog posts as you can with the time you have?
How long does it take you to write a new post?

Would you like to get more things done every day?
» Click here to sign up for a free time management course «

Keywords: blog tips, drafts, wordpress, 80/20, notepad, cell phone, paper, tricks