The Fall Freight Train is Coming – Get Back on Track

Summer is coming to a close.The rapid pace at which the season has passed has my head spinning. My intent was to do a lot of blogging, spend some time doing research and even do some early class prep for a new academic year. Thanks to a rush of new business, a crisis to manage and moving out of our house, I’ve been less than productive in the ways I’d intended to be.

So, I’m finding myself feeling like I need to get back on track – catch up with my feedreader, figure out what the PR blogosphere has been talking about the last 3 months and prep for the coming year. If you’re a student (or even a recent grad), you may be feeling the same way… summer can be distracting.

I’ve been thinking about how to get myself in the groove and thought I’d share a few ideas with you. I welcome yours, too! Please leave them in the comments.

• I went through my feeds and marked as read all my entertainment-related subscriptions. I have my feeds organized by category, so this was pretty easy. Sorry, Perez and the lovely ladies of Jezebel. I did the same with ‘non-essential’ feeds related to topics that have, at one time, piqued my interest but tend to go unread anyway most of the time (and I probably should unsubscribe). This left me with PR, Marketing, Social Media and a few others as well as feeds I read for clients and dropped my “unread” number to less than 3,000 posts.
• I went through the rest of the feeds and started with those in each folder who I always find to be insightful and a good read. A few of my favorites: Kami Huyse, Gerald Baron, PR Squared, KD Paine and Media Bullseye. I have close to 200 feeds that I read for myself, so really, this is just a few. Those that I find occassional value in, but aren’t “favorites,” I opened and scanned quickly. If I had more than a month of posts to read on any blog, I didn’t. I stopped reading anything older than the first of August.
• I spent a couple of days paying attention to links coming via Twitter. This was helpful to be able to jump into current conversations. If Todd Defren or Chris Brogan had a link, I clicked. Same with Robert French and Karen Russell.
• I’ve been blogging. This is the second post this weekend for PRos and I also blogged on my agency blog. This has helped me start thinking more clearly about topical issues.

I also plan to have lunch with Mrs. Gallicano this week and brainstorm ideas with her for this fall’s students (and of course catch up on gossip). I want to be in a thinking mode when I head to the Nevada desert to spend some time with my family. I find poolside to be an excellent place to read, think and write. 🙂

How about you?