10 Best Sites I Visit Every Day.

A lot of readers and clients have been asking me what are my favorite and most influential sites I visit. The one that get me excited about work and life. I do read a lot on the web during my off hours and find there are certain key sites who do a great job to help me stay up on business issues and personal interests. In no special order:

Popurls

My first stop. This is an aggregator site which brings together many other aggregator sites like Reedit, Digg, Metafilter, Delicious, etc. It delivers the best of the best. Be careful, you can spend HOURS here. (Link)

Wall Street Journal

My business info standby. I can whip through this paper pretty quickly - I don’t get caught up in the opinion - I focus on the facts. Who’s up, who’s down, who’s doing something new - it’s all here (I get this delivered in paper form daily). (Link)

The Economist

Deep, deep analysis of the world from an international viewpoint (I also get this in print form too). (Link)

Cool Tools

My favorite gadget site by Kevin Kelly. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. (Link)

Twitter

I follow a number of key influencers - Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, Ivan Misner, Tom Peters, Alyssa Milano (no kidding - she’s great), Michael Hyatt, Soraya Darabi, and Brian Soils. It’s immediate, recent and I can pop in, read, and pop out pretty quickly. It bugs me when people complain about Twitter (I don't have the time!) — it's a tool — use it as a tool, not a TV show.  (Link)

Lifehacker

A great site delivering tips and downloads for getting life and business things done. Unfortunately, they just went through a horrible redesign making their site virtually unusable (owned by Gawker Media - all of their sites have the same architecture and navigation now - I hate it). Still great info. (Link)

Copyblogger & Problogger

Read both of these and your writing will most certainly improve. Brian & Darren bring lots of great ideas, innovative topics and powerful info — stuff I would never think about on my own. (Link) & (Link)

Seth’s Blog

The great Seth Godin — he's a god. Nuff said. (Link)

TED

If you haven’t visited here - you have been missing the best of the web. TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading. All of their speakers and videos are online — I link to them often. (Link)

Inc. & Entrepreneur

Two great magazines who have all of their articles online. Great for the practicing or budding entrepreneur in all of us. (Link) & (Link)

Image provided by OakleyOriginals at Flickr.

Made The WSJ Again!

Sue Shellenbarger from the Wall Street Journal called me a few weeks ago. She asked me about what key Time Management tools that I might know of. Over a number of phone calls we discussed the basic philosophy of time management, some key tools that my clients use (GTD, Pomodoro, FranklinCovey), and even introduced her to an incredible coach that wrote a book on time management — Keith Rosen.

In the end, Sue hit another one out of the park with this piece. Check it out!

Care and Feed Your Key Contacts.

Dipchand "Deep" Nishar, vice president of products at networking site LinkedIn Corp., doesn't view online networking as something you do only when looking for a job. By Jennifer Saranow at WSJ.

The 40-year-old spends about 15 minutes every morning reading his business contacts' status updates and responding. To keep up his connections, he sends congratulatory notes to those who have received promotions, restaurant recommendations to those who have moved, contact suggestions to those who have changed jobs, and article links to those he thinks might be interested.

About two to three times a month, he reads his social connections' status and news updates and sends them similar kind or helpful notes. He also posts his own status updates weekly, sharing what he's reading or a personal project he's working on -- sticking to topics he thinks his networks would be interested in.

Keeping in touch in this way, Mr. Nishar says, helped him get his current job: His connections recommended him for the post before he even knew about it. "Your network is most valuable when you don't need it," he says.

To get the most out of his networks, Mr. Nishar is picky about whom he lets in and ignores invitations that don't make the cut. He restricts his LinkedIn network to professional contacts he knows well and would want to do business with. (Those he's just met once or twice wouldn't make the cut.)

He limits his Facebook network to friends and social acquaintances. (Very few present or past coworkers can be found there.) All this eliminates the need to delete contacts down the road. "I try to keep my network unpolluted so I don't have to sift through it later," Mr. Nishar says.

Mr. Nishar uses Facebook to stay up-to-date on the lives of those who want to share their videos and photos there -- but he doesn't include himself in that category. Seeking a greater degree of privacy, he posts his family photos and videos to Picasa and YouTube but makes them available only to those he invites to view them. With close friends, he keeps in touch by phone.

Read more great career-oriented articles by Jennifer here.