"Am i really hurting myself by doing this"

I don't understand...how can you be hurting yourself???

Practically all directories are worthless.

Part of what I do is take out one hour a day doing a search on sites that match my articles. I'll do a bunch of keywords, and just do a search on all thes sites, one page at a time.

Example: First I will do "dating advice." Then I will go through the first, oh...100 pages. Then I wil move on to the next keyword. So on and so on.

Another thing I do is to see where other popular writers are submitting their articles to, and then follow suite.

Personally, I don't worry about their page rank. Many, MANY sites have low PR, but they still get a lot of repeat traffic. Also, you may have a site with a PR of 1, but due to their hardwork and goal, it may be up to 7 in six months.

I put in the site's URL in Traffic Estimate - Web Site Traffic Analysis and Other Web Site Tools to get a rough estimate on their monthly hits.

I know, it is a rough estimate, but it still puts me in the ballpark.

That way I don't waste my time with sites that have less than, say, 30,000 monthly visitors. Yes, that estimator may be wrong on that particular site, but I'll pass anyway. I just don't have the time to take a chance on a site that may not have enough hits.

I don't know if it is your style, but maybe it is something to think about, nevertheless.