Here’s my first one.  Tell me what you think…

I’m trying my best to avoid TV (especially news) at home, but I am much more concerned about my time at work.

So over the last few weeks I have systematically unsubscribed to almost every email newsletter I get.  Here are the only exceptions…

1. SearchCap daily news on search engines
2. MarketingVox daily newsletter
3. Marketing Sherpa weekly research

The process has been very liberating.  It is a strange feeling to come in to work in the morning and only have emails from actual human beings in my inbox.  It’s also strange to walk out of the room for an hour or two and come back in and have no new emails.  It’s wonderful.

The whole reason I’m doing this is to free up time to create more.  The new design for my SEO training site is now up and running.  It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting where I need it to be.

A new feature of the new design is that I am going to be providing more “resources” for my clients, students, and subscribers.

Thus, I am working hard to spend less time reading and more time writing – at work, at least.

I redesigned the home page to be a BIO about me and added a History page as well.

I also made the home page my BIO, not my blog.

The goal is to get people searching on my name to find the information I want them to find.

Right now I’m in the middle of reading a book on how to be more efficient.  I don’t really recommend the book because it’s not that great.  But one thing it recommends is to stop reading, listening to, and watching news.

I’ve thought long and hard about this one.  After all, I built my entire business since 2003 by reading and studying forums, blogs, articles, magazines, books, etc.  Also, I love to read.  I owe any success I’ve had to the tremendous effort I have put toward learning as much as I can about my industry (Internet Marketing).

But I think it’s time to be more careful about how much time I spend reading vs. how much time I spend actually working.

So I’m going on a diet.

• I’ve unsubscribed to all but one email newsletter. 
• I’m going to avoid all television news, magazines, blogs, and forums. 
• If something is important enough, I will hope that my friends or colleagues will let me know about it. 
• If I need to learn something, instead of reading and researching, I will ask those that have done it already.

The one exception will be the few podcasts I listen to while driving.  It’s much more enjoyable than the radio, and makes my driving time pass quicker.

I’ll use any extra time I gain to building valuable content for my clients and customers.  I also plan on spending more time with my wife, friends, relaxation, and personal projects.

This should also help me toward my goal of working 4 days per week in 2009.

Next time I talk with you, if I ask “What’s new?”…  Be assured that I honestly don’t know.

We have one of those remote thermometers in the house.  The sensor is right outside our back door in the shade.  It topped out at 100.  Today it got up to 103.1.

Yesterday I put the sensor out on the sidewalk in the sun and it got up to 126.  It is only June 8!

This is crazy.  I’m not planning on leaving the house again for the rest of the day.

This past week my mom and dad visited from Milford, Massachusetts.  For those of you that don’t know, I grew up in the cold region of New England (Go Celtics)!  I lived the same small apartment with my sister and parents until I turned 21 and moved to New York.

I always enjoy when my mom and dad visit.  (I know you read this mom!)

But the thing I enjoyed most this time was just talking.  Both my parents have always been a pleasure to talk with.  I’ve always been impressed with how many close friends they both have.  In these days we live in, it’s uncommon for people to stay close friends with so many people for such a long time.

My parents are different.  As we reminisce about old times, they still keep up with and talk with many of the friends they had when I growing up in that third floor apartment in the 1970s. 

My parent’s friends are now in all parts of the country.  But they keep in touch with so many of them.  They care about these friends and I know for sure that many of these friends still care very deeply for my parents.

It’s interesting that this got passed down to my sister and I.  We both are the same way.  In fact, many of our closest friends are the children of my parent’s friends.

Both family and friends mean a lot to my parents and I’ll always owe that aspect of my personality to them.

Thanks mom and dad!

I love you both.

Corey

Too funny…

Cheap people all around the country have spent their hard-earned $10 for flights and now they are just going to keep it because of a little thing called rising fuel costs?!?

The gas for my car is rising too.  Too bad.  All of us are stuggling with fuel costs.  We can’t just give up.  Why shouldn’t SkyBus have to stick it out too?

Actually I don’t really care because I’m not that cheap.  They can have my 20 bucks.  The date I picked to go back to Massachusetts was not ideal anyway.  I’ll get to pick a better date if I use a “normal” airline.

What is far more interesting is that today is the last day any SkyBus airlines will fly and my co-worker Shannon Miller is in Ohio right now.  He flew out there on SkyBus and was supposed to fly back here to North Carolina tomorrow.

I guess he’ll need to get a cab?  We’ll see.  Stay tuned.

(Pretty interesting, eh?  I bet you’re glad you read this post.  I think I reached a whole new level of boring this time.)

I’ll try to be more interesting in the future.