The Internet has brought us tremendous convenience. Many excellent products, as Zhang Xiaolong said, strive to attract and immerse users by exploiting human greed, anger, and ignorance. Users can easily waste a lot of time on these products, yet the benefits they gain are far less than expected. How to use these Internet products correctly and appropriately is worth deep thought for every net addict.Let me share my experiences and practices.Instant Messaging (IM)About two years ago, I was a heavy IM user. I had Ali Wangwang open all day, joined many groups, and would quickly respond whenever there was a message in the group. After using a software to track my usage, I found that I spent at least 3 hours a day on Wangwang. This statistic really shocked me, so I made the following adjustments:In short, **use IM proactively instead of being used by IM**. The same applies to QQ, Gtalk, WeChat, etc. Zhang Xiaolong's wish is great: it would be best if no one used WeChat. Hopefully, this wish will come true soon.EmailI love Web-based email systems and haven't used Outlook or similar client tools for several years. I have been using Gmail to send and receive emails and enjoy its default recommended usage habits:In summary, **take the initiative to handle emails rather than being handled by emails**. Of course, this relates to the nature of work. For me, and probably most programmers, I believe this can effectively improve time utilization.Weibo (Chinese microblogging platform)I once posted a Weibo saying that the Great Firewall did a good thing by effectively reducing the time many internet users spent on Twitter. At the time, this post was half-joking and half-serious. Now I almost never go on Twitter, and I could say the Great Firewall helped with that. Everything has pros and cons; there is no absolute good or bad.Nowadays, I basically only use Sina Weibo. It seems like I'm an active user, but actually, I don't spend much time on it. On average, I spend less than half an hour per day over a week. My main methods are as follows:All other functions of Weibo are trivial to me. Occasionally, I'll forward something, like Weikan, but more often, I look at it from a product analysis perspective.In conclusion, it still comes down to that: **use Weibo proactively instead of being used by Weibo**. Don't believe the nonsense about utilizing fragmented time. Any product that occupies users' fragmented time is a rogue, and users are already pitiful enough. Weibo is just a glove; wear it when you need it. Never treat Weibo as a plane, logging in as if you're boarding, because when it crashes, you won't even be able to get off.RSSNowadays, this doesn't seem to need much discussion anymore. A few years ago, I wasted a lot of time on Google Reader, feeling uneasy if I didn't check it daily. Now, with the decline of blogs, there are fewer and fewer quality contents in RSS feeds, so without desire, I don't invest time, which is not a concern.Similar to RSS, there are other websites like Douban, Zhihu, Pinterest, etc. For me, they aren't very attractive. I only look at book reviews on Douban when buying books, and occasionally visit Zhihu when invited via email to answer questions. For Pinterest and other foreign sites, I mostly approach them with a mindset of studying the product, and I've never truly integrated into them, including Facebook, which feels like a website for people who have nothing better to do.I forgot to mention another function of Weibo: collection. I feel this is the new-age RSS. On Weibo, I often see valuable long articles or video shares. At such times, I use the collection feature to save them and then read them during concentrated periods in the evening or on weekends, just like how I used to read Google Reader.SummaryI seem to be a conservative. Recently, after upgrading to Mountain Lion, I spent a lot of time researching Notification Center, and finally decided to completely disable it and remove the icon from the top-right corner. Push notifications on my iPhone were also turned off entirely.I love using Google Calendar. The first thing I do every morning is plan out what I need to do that day. However, I never turn on reminders. I memorize meetings and events early in the day and rarely forget them.Finally, I remember a sentence @Macji said: **Once you experience the joy of immersive work, you won't be addicted to the instant gratification of socialization** (the gist is correct, though I've forgotten the exact words). I think this statement is excellent. I once summarized a few points for myself:It’s said that after turning thirty, one needs to sleep early and wake up early to perform optimally at work. Good night, dear friends. I hope this article is helpful to you.Yubo