Friday, May 4, 2007

Statement of intent

Pardon me for just a moment, but AAAARRGH!

Sorry. One more time, with feeling.

AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGH!

Better. A little.

I've come to the realization that I have too many inputs. There. I've said it. Yes, it's true. I no longer think I can suck in the vast sums of data and process said as I've been trying to do for the last few years. It's not that I need more personal productivity tips -- really I don't. I've got quite the system down to parse and deal with various data sources on a near-continual basis. Hey, I'm no Cory Doctorow, but I hold my own in the GTD world.

No, my problem is simple: I'm a mental packrat. Many things capture my large chunks of my attention to the point of utter fascination, and once I'm educated on a subject I feel compelled to continue my education in infinitum. Thanks for raising your kid to think and love learning, Mom. See where it's led me?

And with that, I hereby declare today a day of declutterization. I have some pressing day-job matters to attend this morning and early afternoon, but after that I'm breaking out the CyberMachete to get medieval on RSS feeds, podcasts, mailing lists, and the like. It won't be pretty and it may not be permanent. But it will remove the feeling of doom hanging over my head like an overused simile in a Scott Sigler story.

9 comments:

  1. Go, Evo, go! I had to do the same thing a few months ago. One of the benefits of using Bloglines to subscribe to blog and podcast feeds is that I can see how many total entries are unread. When I saw hundreds of entries every day, I knew that I had to become more selective in what I read.

    The toughest feeds to get rid of are for blogs where I was once an active commenter. I imagine the bloggers can feel it when I unsubscribe :-).

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  2. I second the use of Bloglines; it's a wonderful aggregator for those of us not lucky enough to have a Mac to tote around.

    I'm suffering from input overload as well, but I can't seem to find the network cord to unplug something. I think it's all being delivered without wires.

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  3. Evo, you just need to add more IPA to the mix, then it will all make much more sense. You don't have information overload, you have IPA underload. The right amount of bitter helps filter and assimilate what is important. Trust me on the this.

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  4. I second Dani on this one. About every six months I go through reevaluate what I am listening and reading. I also have a one day a week where I do my best to stay away from my computer.

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  5. Hmmmm... I've been honoured to be part of your RSS burden in the past. I totally understand about doing some housecleaning every now and then.

    I've also become impressed with the way in which people like you, CA, CC and Mur are starting to take those days away from the wired-in... although, I can feel my body shaking now just at the thought.

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  6. Evo! RSS 'The Power of Now' by Tolle :-)

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  7. Remember to recycle your unwanted RSS feeds, bookmarks and Podcasts. You may not want that data but many people less fortunate than yourself would benefit from a spare Tag in The Seam or hand me down Food Geeking. Dont just wrap up the ends of your Threads and bundle them off to the data fill site. Reuse and recycle your clutter and make you trash some one elses trends. Thanks for reading.

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  8. I do that not only with my RSS feeds and Twitter friends, but my Flickr friends and Flickr groups. Most people would never think of weeding those out, but every few months I have to do a purge. And it really does help. Good luck!

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  9. I have had the same occur. Dare I say that slice-of-scifi has gone under chop more than once from my itunes podcast list. It always seems to resurface though. You just can't stay away from you guys!

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