5 better ways to spend your time online

Move over death, the internet is the great equalizer. Well, that was until our Government decided to tax it. Everytime you access the web, you are exploiting the greatest equal opportunities platform ever conceived.

Basic education and birth control are cool. But the internet brings together so many benefits to your finger tips. It’s a given that every entrepreneur nowadays incorporates “online” in some way. Some challenges women entrepreneurs in Kenya face, like networking, are easily bypassed on the internet. Just respond to that DM.

Work is work. When it comes to personal use, we have a bias of limiting the internet’s potential to entertainment. Sometimes it’s not entirely our fault. For example, social media is designed to make us addicted.

But it’s best we start putting more emphasis on improving ourselves. If for anything, it’s to make up for part of our budgets that go to accessing the internet. How much money do you spend on data? Women in Kenya spend more than sh.1000 a month on data, on average. In comparison, men spend way less than that. Women spend twice as much time online so, we guess, it makes sense.

Our hearts crack a bit. We read that entrepreneurship is not in the top 5 of what Kenyan women check online. C’mon you guys. Collectively, we have a preference for foreign content. That’s bad. It’s also okay because many experiences are shared globally. Otherwise how would memes and gifs work?

You can commit to getting more from the internet than you pay for. And in as much you’ll be going for knowledge (“is power”), you also stay entertained. Read our ideas on how you can better spend your time online:

Hashtags

Some individuals can’t handle it when we share our good life online. Deal with it. Others despise how users try to get away with giving analysis of incredibly complex stuff in a few hundred characters. We, here, have to write entire articles. The worst thing is living by chancing upon the good things. You can use standard hashtags to come across resources, tips, motivation and shared experiences everyday and deliberately. As an entrepreneur, you will find hashtags like #business, #smallbusiness, #MondayMotivation highly useful. Find more.

Infographics

There are few things better. Infographics are visually appealing. They also simplify processes in clear step-by-step structure. We have our own infographics tag. You too can find ones that fit your other interests. What’s more, you can learn to make your own infographics for free. Platforms like Daily Infographic, Piktochart and Canva give you this opportunity.

YouTube

The cost of data has been going down rapidly in Kenya. Then the Government did what they did. Kenyans now rank YouTube as an everyday use platform. There’s competition to provide local content through this medium as well. And who knows? We may throw our hats in the ring soon (we’re not promising anything). On YouTube, you can get a clue on trends and ideas of business. You also gain from inspiration and free tutorials. A guy won an Olympic medal from these, others start entire businesses. Channels like TED and TEDx are some of the gateways to expand your perception.

Podcast

Do you think podcasts will ever catch on in Kenya? We can’t go over talk shows about “who should pay for a date” again and again (the person who makes more pays, we’ve solved it, sheesh). Your commute deserves better. Your background attention deserves more. Podcasts allow you to customize your audio content to suit your interests whatever the moment. In entrepreneurship, listening to opinions and concepts would do you a world of good. You only need to search for them by the key words. Google podcasts and Sound Cloud are some platforms to do this.

Lessons

You can pick new skill at your convenience but still benefit from the structure of a curriculum. There is no limit to what you may decide to pursue. Your business would excel from you getting technical training on a few more aspects of management. The eLearning platforms give you content from the best universities for free. Popular ones include, Khan Academy, edX and Tutorials Point.

 

On which productive sites do you spend your time online? Help everyone by sharing in the comments below.