how do you do it?

I was lamenting over the subject of time management and getting my blog reading done with Timothy Johnson of Carpe Factum this past Friday morning at our monthly central Iowa blogger social hour. Since then, I've decided to focus my Sunday's to reading and mentioning the great finds from other bloggers.

Why is reading other blogs so vital for me? 1) It connects me with the bigger world of people that offer so many cool insights and information for FREE! 2) Reading affords me the opportunity to comment which of course spreads the wealth of the blog universe even farther.   

These days my big challenge is to grow the dsmBUZZ merchant network. It sometimes takes FOREVER once a merchant has decided to participate to get them to provide me copy, or make time for video, or send me a photo, etc. I'm so very appreciative of the merchants who have joined. I think their presence on the merchant list says that they realize they are not islands here but part of a bigger community. but often, even with good intentions it takes much time to get people on board.

After reading Timothy's post at IowaBiz.com I've started to give some serious thought as to how to streamline the process because it is KILLING my spirit to have people procrastinate.

I'm thinking of carting my computer with me and setting up appointments with merchants. The idea will be to give them a checklist of what is needed and tell them to have it at the time of our meeting. Then I'll just place them on the network with their text, photo, logo, etc. at the time of the meeting. What do you think? Will it work? I'll report back.

Thanks to Mike Sansone for pointing out out Slide Share. My wheels are already turning on how I can use this great tool.

Writer's block is always an issue for me. Thanks to Drew McLellan for the suggestion in his post on how to overcome this problem.

Finally, I've been reading Gretchen Rubin's blog on The Happiness Project. A couple of her latest posts caught my attention. Her quote by Samuel Johnson for example makes me think about flying first class.(I've never done it) but I think about how appealing it looks and how much people are willing to spend for items that would be cheaper on the ground such as a glass of wine, a morsel of toast, and more leg room.

Gretchen also talks about vacation which has me wondering about how I'm going to manage my plans and technology overseas. I will be hosting some shows of Entrepreneur People Real Stories, taking some video, and wanting to post while I'm in London and Scotland and I have no idea how to do this unless I take my computer. Will I have electrical issues with currents and my equipment? Should I just find internet stations and post there? Can I do that? If you have suggestions please share.

photo by Gianluca Neri, powered by flickr