While my life continues to get busier and busier each day, I am faced with the challenge of how to manage the increasing activity. Each day, I juggle work, healthy living, and my personal life with varying degrees of success. Work/life balance has always been important to me but it is amazing how fast one or the other can take over if you aren’t careful.

Not helping this situation at all is the constant lure of new social media websites and iPhone applications that seem to launch each week. For example, a few months ago I started to see posts from friends that were done through FourSquare. I pride myself on being an early adopter of new technology and have been the first in line to buy a new device or sign up for a new service more than once. In this case, I was a bit conflicted - I already spend a ton of time on Facebook and Twitter, both online and on my iPhone, so how would I be able to add another application into my life without upsetting my current balance?

With some hesitation, I jumped in and signed up for a FourSquare account after asking a friend of mine what he thought of the application. In no time at all, I was checking in here and there several times a day and sharing the updates with friends. I was primarily able to do this because FourSquare allowed me to sign up using Facebook Connect. so I didn’t have to create a whole separate account. I was then able to Tweet and post my status to Facebook, reducing my need to sign into those two services separately to do customized updates. So while I am now accessing a 3rd application on a regular basis, it feels like I am netting out with the same level of diversion.

But wait, there is more.

Soon after, a friend recommended that I download Gowalla. What the hell is that? Well, it is a similar service to FourSquare in that you can check in at places you visit to tell your friends where you are. My network currently seems to be fighting over which one to use so I am giving it a try while the winner nets out. Maybe both will find their place in the social landscape and I’ll then be up to 4 applications I need to check several times a day.

Was this enough? Not at all. I rediscovered an old friend of mine, Yelp, that I hadn’t visited in some time. Yelp includes the ability to check in and post reviews so could be one more application trying to pry my eyes from the others.

To add to this pile what will certainly not be the final diversion, Google introduced Buzz a few weeks ago. While I have a Gmail account, it is not my primary email, so I have to make an effort to hop into Buzz to see what is going on. That said, it now seems that I can update/tweet/check in/post/comment/review/chat/scream on at least 6 applications each day that are clamoring for my attention, when the quantity of free time I have to do so is as limited as ever.

I certainly enjoy all these applications for different reasons but one thing is very clear - unless my network makes a defined decision to favor one application over another, or some of the new players go belly up, I will be faced with an increasingly difficult decision each day - which application or applications will lure me in and take over my limited personal time?

I guess I’ll just have to ride the social media wave and see where it takes me.

Tom Williams is SVP of Client Services with KARMA Media Labs.