How much time do you invest online?
As more of my attention has shifted away from newspapers, television, books, magazines and radio, I’ve been fascinated by how much time I’m investing online in content consumption…and it’s increasing!
I used to read two newspapers every morning (The Minneapolis StarTribune and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)) and I still leaf through the “Strib”, but the WSJ went away a long time ago as I get my business news elsewhere.
My RSS reader has 182 blogs in it along with 17 major tech news sites; 6 video related sites and many others.
People send me links to videos that I’ll open at some point…but I always sigh when it’s some clearly interesting video that says “59:05” or something and I don’t take the hour to view it. I just don’t have spare hours laying around.
Twitter gets my moments at stoplights, standing in line, or other times when it’s convenient.
A quick back-of-the-envelope of my personal time investment shows that I’m spending between 2-3 hours per day online consuming content. Much of that used to be TV watching or reading books…but the internet is my mind’s crack cocaine and I’m so jazzed and stimulated exploring, learning, seeking, considering and playing online that I’m still enjoying it, but am growing ever so slightly concerned that it’s too much.
What about you? I’m not talking an addiction or anything, but are you questioning your own time investments? Are you getting the payback on all of that investment that you’d hoped for or expected?
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About Steve Borsch
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.
Connecting the Dots Podcast
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.
I think is a great article. I’m not so interested in the amount of online reading that I do. It’s probably too much.
However, I’m more intrigued by the online reading that my students are doing. How many of them would every pick up two, let alone one, newspaper? How biographies would they pick up? How many journals or magazines would they pick up?
Now think about how many Myspace pages they are reading. How many blogs they are reading. How many other online resources they are consuming. I would guess that they are reading more now than before they had an internet connection. That is outstanding.
With proper guidance from “connected” teachers who take Web 2.0 into the classroom, these students could easily be learning about the world through Startribune.com and other outlets they enjoy.
I was just thinking along these lines on how much a hobby has turned into a time-sapping activity. It is hard not peeking in every few minutes, as we spend most of our ‘work-time’ online as well, in front of the PC.
Too much of anything is no good.
I was talking about a similar topic earlier today with a colleague. We were discussing the challenge of being a local media company and trying to determine why they are relevant in the near future. Local media has always been the point of aggregation for our news consumption and other local information. Newspaper for long form, TV for immediacy and Radio for constant companion.
Now the Net is this point of aggregation and I can get them all and more.