Mike Abasov

If you were following any of my advices, you are probably struggling with finding time for everything like I do. I’ve never been so busy in my life, but, as time goes by, I find new ways to make the most out of every hour and not burn out. It gets easier with practice.

Here are a few things you can do to find time for everything and make your time constraint less binding.

Utilize

Look back at your days. You might find that you’re not utilizing a huge junk of time. You spend 2 hour a day commuting while doing nothing but mind wondering? You stay in lines for 10 minutes feeling bored? You wash your frying pan many times every day?

No wonder you feel like there is not enough time for anything! Try this.

Audiobooks for your commute time
I’ve been listening to one business book a week while driving for the last 3 weeks, and it’s an amazing time-saver! Try them at Audible and get a membership, if you find them awesome.

Multitask
Audiobooks is the first steps to multitasking. I also manage to check-in on Foursquare, while waiting for my tall no-whip mocha, or check email, if the line gets lengthy. How can you make the most of your wait time?

Group tasks
This one is about frying pans, for example. The problem with cooking every day is that you need to clean after yourself, heat the pan, etc. every day. Try cooking for a few days ahead in one session. This is also a great way to cut on sandwiches and chinese (nom-nom-nom!).

Utilizing sleep time is bull shit
Sleep is very important. It helps you learn and increases your productivity. You might want to cut on sleep to fit in more (I’m guilty of that), but it only results in low creativity. And low creativity stops you from finding easy and fast solutions (Rework). 

Speed up

You can do a lot of thing much faster.

Say showering. I got this advice from Men’s Health, and it really makes sense to spend under 10 (or even 5) minutes showering.

Or speed reading. As a student you are going to read a lot over a long period of your life. Why not learn to read fast? Try apps like EyeQ.

What else? You can do almost anything faster. For example, if you’re a blogger, check out these articles: “How to Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Minutes” or “HOW TO WRITE THREE BLOG POSTS A DAY.”

Hack It

You can be more productive by changing the way you do things, perceive them, or by using some tools. Research how other people make most out of their time. My favourite places are Lifehacker for recipes and Appstorm for apps.

Even such an incompetent source as myself can show you something cool, right? (Smile, you’re on camera ;-).

Classic Time Management

Use a calendar
I prefer iCal (Mac OS), but Google Calendar is pretty good too. Log everything to your calendar: birthdays, classes, regular workout times, etc. I believe that a perfect calendar has no empty spots.

Also, and this is a good one, set up automatic import of your events from websites like Facebook or Meetup.com. This is the most awesome thing that has ever happened to calendars. Ever!

I also use wall calendars to separate some specific categories of activities, like blogging.

To-Do lists
Gotta love them. I use Things (Mac OS, iPad, iPhone), combined with iCal and Highrise for my to-dos. I separate tasks by activities, such as “School” or “Shopping,” and by projects, such as “HootSuite Internationalization” or “Commerce 295.” 

The main reason to use these lists is pure simple—you forget less. The runner-up reason is also about memory. When you backup your memory in such a way, you can concentrate your thoughts on more important issues and be more efficient. 

That’s it

Sorry for taking so much of your time. But look, if you were reading this post at 1,000 words per minute, while on a bus taking a break from listening to “Crush It!”… you get the point!

How do you fit everything you need to do in you tight schedule? And, on another note, am I crazy?

Net Squared Camp was really fantastic (pictures by photodreamz). I’ve met lots of interesting people and got some more motivation to crush it. Next time I should totally present something myself, because, apparently, I have stuff to say.

I went to 4 sessions:

1. Social Media Ninja School (Cecilia Lu);
2. Measuring Social Media Success (Darren Barefoot);
3. Being A Community Manager (Andy Baryer);
4. Social Media Monitoring (Tara Robertson).

The key takeaways:

• the concept of movement building;
• infographics can be used as an awesome viral marketing tool;
• custom Google maps can bring traffic;
• use LinkedIn customized friend invites;
• reminder: analytics are extremely important.

Also got some ideas for future posts, so, if it’s your first time here, you should better subscribe ;).

More pictures by photodreamz on Flickr.

I just loved the yesterday’s meetup, met so many interesting people, who are as geeky and social-media-style weird (in a good way), as I am. There were no presentations, and I didn’t really have a chance to chat with Shane Gibson, who, as I understand, was an important dude at this event. But, on the bright side, I had a opportunity to meet and talk to such awesome people, as Jason Baker,  Rina Chong, Wendy Hartley,  Wayne Racine, Andy Baryer,  Richerd (from HootSuite), Irina Shestak,  Eric Buchegger,  Meena Sandhu,  Alex Aleksandrov,  Ariane Colenbrander, and others. Oh, I guess I have my Follow Friday list for tomorrow :-).

Networking rocks, and you know that. So get out of your cubicle or home office once in a while and go meet real people. Because, no matter how much the social web influences all of us, we are the same human beings we were a thousand years ago.