When thinking of writing another blog post, it’s often about social media, or marketing, or web 2.0. All really big topics, and all with champions and thought leaders in each. But chances are if you come here to my blog, you’re looking for something. I want to give it to you. But today what I’m going to give you is some advice. It’s advice I need to heed but don’t from time to time.

It goes something like this.

How many blogs are in your feed reader? Mine? Somewhere between 150 and 200. I would love to read them every day but I don’t. Maybe I should focus on about 10 per day and rotate them from time to time? Want some suggestions?  Instead of the obvious, here are some with some variety in the content like Valeria Maltoni, Mark Story, Peter Kim, Toby Bloomberg, B.L. Ochman, Paul McEnany and Beth Harte

How many social networking sites or groups do you participate in? Me? At least a half a dozen, maybe more. How many can I actively participate in? That’s a good question. Maybe 3, maybe 6 and not much more. I’d rather be really active in 3 instead of marginal in 6-10. How bout just Linkedin, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and your blog? 2 of those are somewhat passive so you could manage them all fairly effectively.

How often do you read email? Me? Too often to really even narrow down. But it least 2-3 times per hour. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to get, but surely it can wait an hour or 2 before I respond. I believe Tim Ferris says read it twice a day?

How often do you use Twitter? What actions during your day revolve around the usage and participation of Twitter? Me? I have Tweetdeck running from the moment I step in my office. Not sure if that is wise. Does Mr. Tweet enhance or hinder this?

I think you see where I’m going, but let’s continue.

What amount of your day is spent reading about what is going on in our country right now? I admit that my day revolves around what is happening on a local level (Naples, Florida) a national level, an economic level, and globally. Does it consume me?  No, but It concerns me, so I read a lot. Should I reduce that amount like I should email?

What am I doing about IT? and what can I do about IT? What can you do about IT?

You see the challenge here is that we have a tremendous amount of tool sets and new web sites at hand right now, from social media tools to web 2.0 tools, and we can use them to improve what we do. We can also use aspects of them to improve our companies, our clients and our prospects, but we need to focus on which tools will work best for whom. We need to focus on doing what we do better. We need to refine it. Hone our skills, if you will. We need to better manage our time, our focus and our ability to cut through the clutter of filling up our day with a lot of social media bullshit apps and web 2.0  alpha and beta sites. Focus on what you know and do it better. I know I’m going to try. I need to. We need to. I don’t have a choice and neither do you.