So Many Options!!!

It used to be you woke up, read the paper with your morning coffee maybe watched a little AM news then off to work you go equipped with the appropriate amount of information to make you aware of the world. (I mean I never did this but I'm pretty sure my Dad did...)

Nowadays it just isn't so. Morning paper? Only if I pick up the reader on my way to the El. News of today is online and if you want to know; Who accosted who at the MTV Music awards, How to renovate your office for under $500.00; or Why Michael Jordan's hall of Fame speech was controversial then you'll surely find that in minutes. BUT if you want to know what's going on in the real world you have to dig further.

And boy do I mean DIG! How many news sources can there be? I'm totally lost in information overload. There are so many different sources, online newspapers, business journals, e-newsletters, of course all the industry publications, or the publications of industries that your clients are in, updates of discussion boards on Linked in, twitter... then there are the ones that tell you what's going on in the city, new spots to check out, events OMG!!!!!!!

I spend the first hour of my day combing through all these thing, then I look at the clock and freak out that I've been browsing the Internet when I should have been finding a person to give me money!!! To make matters worse, these people have the audacity to add new information the next day forcing me to participate again in this chastising morning ritual I've developed.

Not only is this confusing, overwhelming, a bit rude (most of these emails come between the hours of 3:34am- 5:47am) but it's also extremely necessary. If I didn't check all the different sources I'm sure I'd just walk into the next networking event and say something extremely stupid like "Oh really I had no idea there was going to be a 2010 world expo???" Great event planner I would be!

So Big W: Which ones do I read? Which ones do you read? And more importantly is there a Blackberry function that automatically turns off my email notification for the hours of 2-6am daily?