But now, I interpret "Internet Marketing Time" to mean something entirely different. It used to take weeks and months for direct marketers to get results back from direct mail campaigns. I remember print ad production taking weeks, with time spent waiting for stats, proofs or copy to be rearranged around graphics. Now that happens in days, hours and seconds.

Online, things can and do happen in seconds, minutes, hours, and even days. On-the-fly focus groups can be thrown together on an ad hoc basis, giving marketers reads of marketplaces and products in no time.

Email and search engine marketing campaigns give the smallest and largest marketers alike instantaneous test results on which offers, keywords, products and services are doing well - and which aren't.

What amazes me is how quickly we've cycled up to this velocity without realizing how dramatic the difference is. Can you imagine what it would be like to put yourself in a marketing time portal, go back just 10 years and try to operate at that reduced speed?

Going back to the analog marketing time frame is a little like Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in the Scalosians episode. Kirk and Spock were living in a greatly accelerated time domain, whereas the rest of the crew moved at an imperceptibly slow speed. You'd have to come back three days later to see that Mr. Chekhov finally pressed the Phazer button. It was that slow.

If you think that's something, go back 20 years in the marketing time portal to the time when most people were using typewriters and rotary dial phones. I think you'd agree it is amazing how much got done, despite the slower pace.

Still, it's not always a panacea living in this greatly accelerated time domain. Now, there's too much information available. It can be overwhelming. In fact, you can slap yourself silly if you let yourself get too inundated.

Nowadays, the trick is knowing which information to pay attention to and which is just noise. It isn't as easy as it sounds.

Here are my Top Ten Tips for Staying Focused in the Age of Info Glut:

1. Just Say No: Unsubscribe from some newsletters, even this one, if it doesn't add value to you.

2. Master Your Universe: When encountering info, simply ask, "How does this serve me?" If it doesn't, kill it.

3. Drop Down Three Paragraphs: With most articles, you can usually skip what I call the big "wind-up" that begins "When I was a wee sprout in Indiana..." Simply drop down to where the writer gets to the meat of the matter.

4. Know Thy Marketplace: What you or I think about what's going to happen means nothing compared to what actually does happen. We can thereafter tell ourselves stories about what the results mean, but more and more I grow humbler and let the marketplace teach me about itself. Years of experience with a given marketplace does help, but isn't bullet-proof.

5. Get Out of Your Head: Find a peer group whom you can trust and use them as a sounding board, and vice versa. Try to pick people who are both like you, and unlike you, when looking for confidantes. Be very careful and let time test the level of trust you should place in them.

6. Be Flexible: This is a big buzzword these days. What was true yesterday may or may not be true today, or may once again become true tomorrow.

7. Everything is a Test: Every phone call, every piece of copy, every time you go out to your marketplace is simply another test that yields more feedback from your marketplace. Even success is a test on its way to getting better.

8. Humility Serves as a Good Marketing Compass: It's healthy to know you don't know everything. I find clients find it refreshing when you state that plainly.

9. Test Online, Then Go Offline: The online world is a very good down and dirty dipstick of the marketplace, which obviously serves you in online marketing efforts, but can also bring you exponentially higher returns in the offline world. Making information products that are only available online available in print is a good example of this principle.

10. Follow the Yellow Brick Weblog:) So many firms have critical data right underneath their noses and they don't make use of it. Your website is talking to you. Listen to it.

11. Bonus Tip - Practice Pulse Universe: Take your own pulse and see if your experience isn't similar to that of your target audience. For example, if you wouldn't respond to your ad in a million years, what makes you think anyone else would?