What? you don’t know what is wilfing? No wonder you never thought if you were leaking time from the cauldron of life! The word “Wilfing” comes from an acronym that was introduced in some dictionaries in 2007. Wilfing stands for “What I was Looking For”(ing) Wilfing points to a phenomenon (and big issue) of people getting lost in the ocean of internet. They forget their original objective and get strayed. You can see websites like pirates who hijack your boat and take it away (even farther away) from your journey path. And what do these pirates steal? They steal your time! Significant amount of precious time lapses before one realizes that she was there on Internet to actually do something —to achieve a clearly defined goal. Web browsing isn’t called “surfing” for no reason! Waves of jumping from one website to another take you away from your desired destination. You find yourself stuck in the web of links. Worse is that you feel happy about it and don’t realize the danger. Sometime ago Fuchsia Macaree produced an interesting illustration that depicted a “Bermuda Triangle” created together by Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. Plane of your productivity sinks in this vile triangle if it gets trapped. For bloggers, it is very important to keep their eyes fixed on their daily goals. Yes, research is an important part of niche blogging —and research requires every blogger to visit various websites —read hundred of articles —but while doing research, a blogger must not lose sight of what was the intended output of research. You should set aside a definite amount of time for research. For example, you may decide that for so-and-so topic you will dedicated only 40 minutes of your time in research. Once these 40 minutes are over, you’ll begin to formulate your own views with the help of material found in research. And then start writing your article. If you’re prone to the wilfing syndrome, you should set an alarm in your your mobile phone, computer (or an old fashioned time-piece from grandma era). Set alarm to ring after, let’s say 40 minutes. That ring will not only wake you from your drift on the waves of internet but also will keep you on tighter schedule. When the alarm sets off, just stop your research (or wilfing for that matter) and begin to organize your thoughts around the topic in focus. I have said it time and again, professional blogging is a serious business. You must not think that it is an easy, arm-chair stuff that will make you loads of run-of-the-mill money. You must treat professional blogging as a full-time job and have to discipline yourself to maximize productivity. So, tell me, have you been a victim of wilfing or Bermuda Triangle of Productivity? Share with us how you tackle this problem. (By the way, it took me 45 minutes to produce this article! That includes research and writing. Now publishing it will take another 15 minutes.)
