Why You Should Be Life Hacking

The Internet continues to cause quite some stress for market researchers. We all know it's influencing data-collection, the competitive research landscape, quality of results, and next to the every day tasks, we need to keep up with the latest developments on top! The latest buzz word is Life Haking: should you be doing that? UK tech guru Danny O'Brien coined the term at a 2004 technology conference (the same conference where he also introduced the term "Web 2.0" it refers to the shortcut solutions for routine but time-consuming problems. And that's what we like to do: avoid time consuming problems...! I hear you think "don't I already have enough things on my mind? I don't have time to read the relevant blogs, listen to Podcasts, be in Second Life and still do research for my clients!" But don't worry: Lifehacking is all about making your (online) life easier. It helps you to focus on what things to read and what to skip. So here are two simple things you can start doing today as MR professional? Google Alerts You could start by creating Google Alerts on any of your key-account clients by combining multiple search items. I have a daily alert on "Synovate"+"online market research" to make sure I get all relevant press releases in my inbox. Del.icio.us Are you still saving your favorite web pages in your Internet browser? So how do you access your favorite research sites in the week end when you have them on your desktop computer at work? Try open an account at del.icio.us account and start saving your bookmarks online! Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website - the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organise and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders on your desktop computer! I can add you to my network on del.icio.us and by doing so you'll have access to all my bookmarks too!