I have a problem. The past weeks I was pretty busy but I had topics to write about. Now that has changed. I have lots of time — even though I need to get many things organized and done — cause I have no school any more till the 15th of September.

Now what to do with so much spare time? Well at first I have to say that it is not just spare time. I have some work to do plus getting things done which I was not able to get finalized in the past weeks. But still there are loots of moments I think about what I want to do with the next weeks.

One of the things I started doing, is to read books. I never read much — maybe I should use ‘many’ cause I can count my read books at about two hands — but that changed about one and a half week ago since when I started to read The 4 hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. That book — plus some other factors which massed up over the past month — inspired me to read more, teach my self other things besides that tech stuff and maybe head into an other direction with what I want to do in the future.

I am nearly finished with that book and have a couple more to read and hope that I am going to remember as much as possible, so that I can use that stuff in my life and enhance my personality and getting better organized.

For now, I just can refer the 4 hour Work Week to you. It is an awesome book teaching you how to get more stuff done, better organized, more free time and maybe even how to get a little — or much — richer. For me I just hope that I can someday do great in this world and that book already taught me some very important things, now I just need to get used to them!

One short answer — for sure! I think that RSS is a great thing and when I heard from it first, it was a time saver for me! At the time — something like end 2006 — I was reading some sites regularly but not via RSS but instead via going to each of the sites and watching the news which arrived while I was not there.

That was in the past. After I got used to RSS and RSS-Readers, I was able to save about 3/4 of an hour — per day! That has changed! Now I spend about 1 hour per day skimming through my RSS Reader and saving long reads for later which take some more time to read! That — in fact — is exactly the opposite of what RSS was for me in the first place. Now it costs more time than before!

And that is what, why I thought about how to save time reading less but staying at the top of the news. And I found a way — which looks like it will work for me:

First of, I look through my RSS Subscriptions from time to time, searching ‘dead’ once and looking at each feed skimming through the headlines, looking if I found the posts interesting enough to read or if I just noticed that there was a new post but did not read it because I was not interested. After that, I — most of the time — have 10 subscriptions less and that is an great improvement in saved time per day.

The second thing I changed was the way I read. At first I wanted to read long posts the minute they arrive. That was an wrong attempt. Now I save longer posts to read them later when I have time. That can be 2 weeks later or just 2 days but either way, it is better than reading it if I need to get other stuff done — and longer posts most of the time have no reference to actual happenings.

The third thing is that I check my RSS in batch. I now more start NetNewsWire at computer startup rather than checking about twice a day — mostly short after I started to work and than short before I go to bed. Sometimes — if I have nothing else to get done — I tend to jump into the RSS reader to get time down, which I need to stop cause there is never nothing else to get done!

One more thing about which RSS subscriptions I deleted when I was under pressure. While I was at preparation for my final exams, I unsubscribed from blogs like NETTUTS, PSDTUTS and other tutorial blogs. If you not currently trying to actually do the things, you should not follow that blogs. I use these sites but not that regularly that I need to get each and every post right into my head. I use them if I have a problem to solve, than these sites are the go to resources to get tutorials.

The past weeks and the upcoming are full of stress—and I wrote many times about that—but I have one more problem that occurred recently. What shall I do with new and maybe great ideas?

At the moment I’m preparing for my final exam. Schools coming to an end for this year of school and everyone tried to rush it to get projects and marks done in time. I’m trying to stay focused and to learn the stuff that needs to be learned.

Till I get one thing. And this one thing is a new idea. And it’s funny, new and especially new great ideas chop in if there is absolutely no time to think about them. I have the problem that if I have a new idea, I try to focus on that, brainstorm it and get to know what’s in the pot for me, if I can realize it, if it is possible or just if I could imagine to do it.

Lately I tried to focus on writing new ideas down, and stay focused on the projects I’m working at right now—school and some little client projects! Even though that is hard, it’s great training for my discipline to focus but it’s not easy!

I think everyone has problems like that, especially people who have many ideas. Most of the time they occur when there is no time and if there is time I have no ideas—which is great cause than I can get the ideas done which occurred while I had no time.

I hope I can stay focused, get school finished the best way I can and let new ideas be new ideas on paper.

At the moment there is a time I have more stress as normally and I’m not expecting the stress to get less over the next 6 weeks. Most it is according to my school’s final tests at the end of this 6 weeks and some other school projects which are due to the 25th of May. This stress lead to some thoughts about my time management.

One first thought was if I need to cut down from two posts per week down to just one per week. Till now I am willing to try to stick to that schedule. The main reason for that is that I need to come over problems. If I have a steady job, I can’t just say that I have no time to get the job done, it just needs to get done. I don’t see this blog as a job but as a opportunity, like I already wrote, for improving my writing and english. And one second reason is that these times full of stress train me at self discipline and force me into a stage were I need to rethink some habits.

For example I had to rethink my time spend daily with reading Twitter and skimming my rss-reader. Twitter is great to stay informed about different topics and different persons, weather the persons around you in real life or just random people from around the web. I had somewhat about 60 people I followed and that was OK as long as I used TweetDeck for my twitter client cause it has the ability to organize people in groups and that gave me the chance to focus on one particular group of people I’m really interested in. Doing that I noticed that I never read the tweets of many people I followed, just because they were not that relevant to me. The logical result was that I unfollowed about half the people I was following at the time. These people were mainly people who are very popular or write way to many tweets per day so that they didn’t post anything I would like to read, rather than replies to people asking questions which don’t interst me. Now I just follow about 35 people and since I use Tweetie I read all messages this people send out.

But maybe one relevant aspect of unfollowing these people: It was not about the people themselves. It was about what I’m interested in. Most of these people write blogs and if they write relevant posts, I’m still reading their blog/rss but many just do not post relevant tweets.

But what is it about the RSS-Reader? I tended to read as much as possible just to stay on top of the happenings. These habit also had to be rethought. Reading about 100 rss-freeds I needed to get rid of some. In the end I got the count down to 69 feeds. The once I deleted were mostly Tutorial like blogs which posted one or two tutorials per day. The problem was that I don’t have the time to get through this massive load of tutorials to do them and to learn the stuff they would like teach me. My decision was that I’m going to check these sites once in a while to see if there was any interesting tutorial and may do that but not in times which are as stressful as the once right now.

One foot note: This post was written in a state of stress and no time, so it’s greatly possible that the decisions I took were wrong or not the best but they worked — and may work in the future — for me. I get a little relaxed and can focus on the main points which need to get ready in time.

Some weeks ago I decided that I wanted to get rid of some of the social-networks I was registered in. This is why and how I changed my use of social-networks.

My problem was that I tended to register an account at each and every social-network I was able to find, just to protect my nickname and / or to test what the network was all about. Till I hit a point where I started to think about why I have all this different social-networks? That was when I decided that something needed to change. What I did was that I created a MindMap of all the networks I was registered at and thought about the reasons, why I registered there. Moving the different networks around I decided which to use active, which to stay registered and not use actively and most important to delete! In the end I got a massive load of networks to delete.

There are some different reasons I decided to delete some networks, some of which were:

• that I had most people in two ore more different networks at a time
• the network had no value to me
• the network is not international

Maybe I’m wrong about this. I now some people who told me that it’s important to be in each and every network, in as many as possible, just to get your name out there. Maybe that’s right but if it is, I decided against that. Why? I think it’s not important to be in as many places as possible to meat the right people. It’s much more important to be at the right place at the right time with the right people. Maybe I decided against the ‘best places’ but for me the places I’m still at are the once which provide valuable to me.

One question I got a lot in the past weeks was why I deleted all my accounts at local networks which concentrate on German / European people. My answer to that is that nearly all people I had there as contacts are registered in at least one international network where I’m too which makes the local network somehow senseless. I’m an international person, I’m interested in what happens all over the world, I’m not really interested what happens locally and if something crucial happens I hear about it thought the people registered at the international networks. Local networks — in my eyes — are some kind of limit.

Maybe some of you think differently about this but for me it meant that I now am registered at social-networks of value to me. Spend less time in the once which didn’t meant anything to me and have more time for things I love to do — somehow that was a GTD decision but I’m feeling better and that is what counts.

This post is part five of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

Over the course of creating and organizing my different projects I would say I gained some knowledge about project management. I’m not going to say that I’m a pro or just good at it cause I definitely have to learn much more in that field but I would say I made some experiences of value. My question is, how can I get better in project management. I think the way I started out was quiet right. Just doing it. Starting a project, planing every detail, brainstorming different ideas, creating something new, failing and in the end having something made out of your own brain and knowledge which you can call a result of value.

I have to admit that in my early days of me trying to get some project done, I wasn’t focused enough and most of the time failed at the later parts of my given line of starting, planing, brainstorming and creating. I did some projects but nearly every time had a problem at the ‘crating’ part. The problem was most of the time that I started a project and in the end it all took to much time and I got a new idea for a new project and the one already started got trashed. That’s getting better, reading about GTD and structured working, I now get my things done and projects finished — which is even more important for client projects.

I’m looking forward to my upcoming projects and hope that something of value will turn out of all these headaches.

I call the last years of headaches my learning and failing time. But someday that has to stop and I’m working hard to get something done, a project, I can call a success is one of my main goals for the feature!

Next is ‘Why I switched or My Macintosh Workstation’. Stay tuned for part six of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.