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Internet Marketers and online entrepreneurs are constantly presented with new information to study, techniques to learn, and great advice to follow.

If you are anything like me, you might have a hard drive full of unstudied information – most of which you want to study and recognize as being valuable and useful.  The trick is, finding time to study the valuable information which you can use in our businesses and projects, to get more done and more effective, while still having time to work on the projects themselves.

Having only so many hours in a day, it can be hard to find a proper balance.  If we spend too much time absorbing information and not enough time acting on it, we will accomplish little.  Yet, when we are untrained and uninformed on the best ways to go about things, we can lose countless hours doing things the wrong way.  Or at least – not the right way, not the fastest way, not the smartest way.

Meanwhile it is easy to overlook the most obvious solutions.  I recently came across one of those obvious solutions which I had been so obviously overlooking – and it’s called an iPod.

Learn a lot in a short time

Many years ago when I was a teenager in Germany, working numerous jobs to earn money to travel to Asia and often waking up at 4 in the morning and working till late at night, I had a similar problem.  I had a lot to study and a lot to learn, and I also had a lot to do.

When I decided to learn German, I got a set of “learn German” cassette tapes and my walkman, and began to carry them around with me.  I listened to those tapes over and over and over, while I cleaned hallways and biked from job to job across Munich.  Within a few months, I spoke German well enough to be mistaken as a German, by a German.  (Note – that was then, this is now.)  Later on when I took a train from Prague to Beijing, I wanted to learn Chinese.  I studied my Berlitz “learn Chinese” tapes every day on the week-long train ride. and I learned Chinese.  Well, enough Chinese to survive that is – not enough to be mistaken as a Chinese person!

Later on in life, when living overseas for several years in Denmark, I thought I might learn Danish. 

I did not have a tape or something which I could just listen to.  I got some CDs but in order to use them I had to sit down at the computer and work on just that.  The result?  There was always something more important to do with my time.  Since I would have had to “set aside time” to study Danish, it just never happened.  If I had had lessons which I only needed to listen to, as I did in the past, I might very well have learned Danish.  As it was, I had 6 years to learn it, and I got as far as counting to 8 and reading billboards.  I never learned conversational Danish after all those years and could still speak other languages better, even for countries where I had only spent a few months.

The system is the key

The point is, when you set up a system for yourself where you can study and learn while doing other things at the same time, you can get a lot further.

Quite a lot of Internet Marketing data is available in MP3 format.  If you set aside a bit of time to collect it together and organize it on an iPod or MP3 player, you may find it to be very well worth it.

I have begun listening to my MP3 files during my walks.  I try to take a walk every day around a small mountain in the forest where I live.  I need to get away from the screen, get some exercise, and breathe some air.

I can also absorb quite a lot of data during that time by bringing my MP3 player with me.  And if I want a break from that as well, I can just pause it and play with stones for a bit.

Another family member of mine has learned a large amount of Internet Marketing information in a short time, in this fashion.  She simply loaded her iPod with every Mp3 file she could find, starting with the priorities of course, and began to listen to them – in the car while driving, on walks, etc.

If you start loading up your MP3 player with information you can listen to, and get in the habit of using it, you can get through a lot of material.  You can learn a lot of very useful information which will help you succeed better with your projects and business endeavors.

There are many times you can utilize this – while driving, commuting to work, walking, exercising, washing the dishes, cleaning the house, and even (for some people) while falling asleep at night 

If you start to get into this habit you might find that you do have a lot more time to study and that you can absorb all that valuable data that has been sitting in your hard drive – or at least, start to make a dent in it.

Anna Williams is a blogger, webmaster, photographer, and poet. She has lived and traveled in four continents, and currently lives in a forest, in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her personal blog, view photos, or read poetry. Anna offers website development and related services.