The Back-Logged Life

Daunted by the rising piles of “info-glut” (an excellent phrase, by the way), Greg decides to pare down.

My entire life has devolved into an endless, grinding slog through my back-log. Everything I do is about catching up, doing the stuff I didn’t get done the day before, plowing through some other goddamned thing that needs my attention. Ending the day without actually adding to the total aggregate is a victory. There are times when it piles up faster than I can shovel it away…

It’s all hard stuff, too, the sedimentary layers at the bottom of my various in-boxes. One e-mail message can imply a month of work. One feed item can be hours of reading. A single voice-mail can be days of back-and-forth. It’s all stuff that I will realistically be able to do right after I get all the rest they promise when I die…

You’re on notice, Entirety of Human Knowledge. You get a week. If you can’t get my attention in that time — and it’s plenty of time — then you’re tossed, junked, thrown away and forgotten.