New Success Online

• you open your emails first and spend an hour or so reading, replying, and following links

• you visit forums where replies have been made to threads you are following

• you then proceed to post new comments, or start a new thread

• you read posts from your RSS feeds, bookmark, and post comments there

• you check the sports scores from last night

• you look at your site stats and follow links

Does this sound familiar?

I know I'm not the only one who is a victim of this dreaded disease.

Dean Hunt observed that once he gets online his already flaky attention span gets even worse, in a post he aptly titled "I Am Not a Fan of the Attention Span".

Dean wrote this post in response to a request from Rich Schefren to promote his latest report on the "Attention Age".

Rich makes a good point in this report when he says that we suffer from chronic attention deficit disorder.

What can we learn from this?

As marketers, this means we have to realize that people have a short attention span and adjust our approach to capture attention.

However, and perhaps more importantly, we need to understand this and apply it in our own lives.

Now, it's pretty obvious to me that I would be more productive:

• if I do my work first and then check emails

• learn to focus more and prioritize my work

• improve my planning skills

Now, I'm not about to go on a long rant about how to be more productive.

You are most likely well aware of the challenges that you face in this area.

And let's face it, there is no shortage of information and advice on this topic.

But here are a couple of posts that you will find useful:

• Rich Schefren's guest post on Aaron Wall's SEO Blog, "Are You the Interruptible Type?"

• Yaro Starak: "What is the 80/20 Rule and Why it Will Change Your Life"

I'm glad that I was able to write this post.

Posting about an area that you wish to improve is a good idea.

Please feel free to leave a comment on what you do about the dreaded "blogus interruptus".