Image Source: Mykl Roventine

Do you log into twitter, update your status the whole day and do less or nothing related to your online work? Are you trying to limit your twitter usage but cannot? If your answer is yes to the questions, continue reading the post as I show you the 5 ways that I use to limit the time I spend in twitter.

Twitter is addictive. I used to spend a lot of time refreshing my twitter page and sending updates many times a day. I found myself to be less productive when I spent a lot of time in twitter. I don’t say you shouldn’t use twitter but I’m telling you to limit the time spent in twitter. In the past 20 days, I have sent only around 5 tweets. But I have become more productive. You can use a little more than that but not too much.

1. Install A Twitter Client
By installing a twitter client, you don’t need to refresh your twitter page now and then to check if you have got any tweets. You will be updated with the latest tweets automatically. You will also be alerted when you receive a direct message. Sometimes using a twitter client will make you to use twitter more. But if you use the twitter clients properly, you should save a lot of time. Here are two resources with a list of twitter clients:
# How We Tweet: The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients
# A List From Twitter

2. Keep Your Busy With Other Works
This is simple. How to stop doing something? Keep yourself busy doing something else which is more important. For instance, you can keep yourself busy writing articles or reading books to limit your twitter usage. The more you keep yourself busy, the lesser time you will spend in twitter.

3. Twitter Is Down
Create a mindset that twitter is down. Twitter has had lot of downtimes. A month ago, twitter had continuous downtimes. I used to log into twitter only to find that it is down. It happened for a few days. Later twitter started to get back to normal. I created a mindset that twitter is down and stopped visiting twitter many times day.

4. What’s In It For Me
Ask yourself “What’s in it for me?” every time you log into twitter. Use twitter when you want to get something from it. If you feel the need for getting new friends, log into twitter. If you have something extremely important to share with twitter users, sign into twitter. There is nothing that you can gain by spending hours in twitter.

5. A Plan
Create a plan. Allocate a specific amount of time for using twitter. If you are a person who uses twitter 5+ hours a day, you must consider limiting it to 2 hours. Once you are at 2 hours a day, reduce it to 1 hour a day. This is surely possible. With a little effort, you can considerably reduce the time you spend on twitter.

Do you spend a lot of time in twitter? Were these points useful? What do you do to limit your twitter usage? Please share it in the comments.

Maybe the headline is expecting a quick action from you. But you do have to move away from your computer and see the other things in the world. I have had people asking me why they are not able to come up with a good blog post or why they are not productive. Of course you know the answer and I can hear you saying it. Sitting in front of your computer for long hours staring at it, going through all the blog posts in the feed reader or checking your email and stats will not help you in being productive. Please do go out and enjoy the outside world.

Liz Strauss made a post few days back on breakthrough. It was a short post but it had a strong message. You can get tons of ideas when you go out and relax for a while. You will also become a lot productive by going out.

What you can do outside?
I know it can be boring outside sometimes. But to make every single visit to the outside world a worthy experience, take a camera or just your mobile phone outside and capture everything that you think is beautiful or worth a click.

What to do with it?
You can make these pictures your wallpaper or create a screen saver. Every time you feel unproductive, you can take a look at them and try to gain back your blogging confidence. You could also use these pictures in your blog posts and be very proud of that.

Will you be going out and enjoying the nature? Will you be taking pictures of the beautiful sights in the outside world? Share your views or even pictures you have taken before and I will write about it in the blog.