A lot of readers – both casual readers who I know in real life, and fellow bloggers, have made comments on my seemingly inhuman ability to track down the stupid stuff I post here. And almost as many wonder how I find the time.

I have been umming and ahhing about sharing my “secret” with the world. But today, Jeff, speculated that I have invented some sort of time travelling device just so that I can surf the Internet.

It’s time to come clean. Here’s the method to my madness.

1. I try to write one or two substantive posts a day in my main page part – and I try to cover off each category in a week (including a little bit of whatever is going on around me in day to day life. These bits are easy. I don’t have to go looking.
2. I subscribe to a bunch of blogs in each category I write about (I have 349 subscriptions in Google Reader).
3. Each morning I skim through them as quickly as I can – there are usually about 600 posts when I log in before heading off to work. I read all the posts by people in full, skim the gadgets, bookmarking aggregators and the “how to” blogs I subscribe to looking for eligible blog fodder.
4. When I see a post I like, that I don’t want to rewrite substantively, I share it.
5. When I see something I want to post I “star” it.
6. When I have a spare moment I go through my starred pile and post them. Posts in the curiosities column take me about five minutes. I have 207 posts in the queue. You can see what’s “coming up” on my Starred Items page.
7. I visit the blogs of people who comment regularly, or who I know, and keep up with discussions because you never know when someone’s going to say something blogworthy.

During work hours I’ll keep my Google Reader open for down time, I have my gmail open all day (and get emails when people comment), and I keep Windows Live Writer open to work on the longer posts when I’m on the phone or waiting for a meeting.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

Nathan has produced 3163 articles.