How I am saving time

I like reading books.  I usually read "heavy" books that take long to read.  To add to that I am a slow reader.  So if I start reading a book today, I will take months before I can finish it.  I bought a copy of Anna Karenina on May 22, 2010 (i.e. more than 6 months ago), and I still haven't finished reading it.

Some time back I realized that I don't get any time to read.  I didn't like that fact.  I started watching my daily activities and figured what all were taking my time.  The first thing was email.  Every random vendor was sending me promotions.  I spent about two weeks actively unsubscribing or creating filters to stop spam from interrupting me.

Next was staying away from Facebook.  There are two reasons why I don't use Facebook much.  First is that it doesn't have a useful search functionality.  If I post something on Facebook today, I cannot find that post 3 months later by searching.  The second reason is that there's too much of mindless stuff going on in Facebook.

Third one was cleaning up my Google Reader feeds.  I had subscribed to Jeyamohan's blog though I hardly read the posts he writes.  I can always go read directly from his site if I have time.  Likewise I unsubscribed from some Android forums that weren't of good use of my time.

The final thing was to unfollow some people on Twitter.  @adsahay is a friend, but he doesn't post any personal updates on Twitter.  @lavsmohan posts several tweets a day and most of them are boring.  (Her blog is pretty good, by the way; her blog is still on my Reader.)  Then a few other people from Tamil film industry.  They were mostly giving film news updates; that's not something I'd want to read everyday.  Unfollowing them all has made my Twitter timeline a lot slimmer.

All these have given me a good amount of spare time which I can use to write and read something I can feel good about.