Why Are You Reading All That News?

wood.tang — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:41:54 -0500

When I wrote about my method for controlling RSS overload a couple weeks ago, 43 Folders user terceiro left a comment that put me in my place:

You’re feeling stress about your RSS feeds? Talk about self-created problems. The real solution to managing RSS feeds is to stop reading RSS feeds. It’s simple … when a purely optional “convenience” technology is causing stress, it’s time to re-evaluate at a pretty fundamental level.

I read this and thrashed and spluttered like Yosemite Sam for a while before I admitted it: he’s right. It is a self-created problem, and I need to understand what makes me feel the need to consume the equivalent of a Carnegie library every day, instead of just finding a more efficient way to choke it down.

When I read discussions about managing RSS and information overload, I tend to see three justifications for why people “need” to subscribe to 842 news feeds:

I want to stay informed about the world - Meaning, I never want to be one of those idiots on Jay Leno who can’t name the Vice President. I identify with this impulse the most strongly.
I need to for my job - Particularly for IT folk, usually along the lines of, “I need to stay on top of developments in programming/web design/cat herding so I can advance my career.”
I need to for my blog - As in, “I need to follow all these different feeds to find interesting stuff to pass along to my readers.” Everybody wants to be Jason Kottke or John Gruber.

After thinking about my own motivations and admitting that I’ve uttered all three of those at some point as well, my answer to every one would be, “Really?” Are you really going to miss that promotion if you didn’t hear about the JDK update the second it was released? Are you really going to lose readers if you don’t link to that third Boing Boing post? And are you really going to turn into a sheltered, mouth-breathing Epsilon if you happen to skip the news cycle one day?

For me, it’s always been a matter of identity. I like to view myself as an informed, plugged in, man of the digital world, and to be this person, I think I need to see all the latest news, comment on the hot blogs, post things on del.icio.us. That’s all fine and dandy if that’s the person I want to be, but within reason. I should know by now from experiences with other jobs, other vocations, and other vices, that if they start to cause me this kind of concern, something needs to change.

“The world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.”

This isn’t to say that we should all chuck our newsreaders and smash our TVs, but that we should, like terceiro said in that comment, keep a little perspective. In terms of those first two reasons above, we don’t give ourselves enough credit for being the smart, inquisitive people that we are. Even if you shut down the RSS reader for a few days, you’ll still know everything you need to know to do your job right. The fact that you possess such a powerful thirst for knowledge will cause you to absorb it passively wherever you go, from snatches of overheard conversations, TV, and radio. It will be enough until you have more time and energy to read it yourself. And the world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.

In regards to #3, we can also get a little full of ourselves at times. Despite wishful thinking, there aren’t many bloggers who would be missed if they took a day off here and there. Take this site for instance; I bet you didn’t even notice Merlin was gone. Unless it really is your job, you should probably pull up short when it starts to feel like one.

Here’s a suggestion: over the holidays when you’re traveling, or when things are slow because everyone else is traveling, remove yourself from the news cycle for a few days and see if you don’t shrivel up and die. Take long walks. Cancel something. And when you come back and open your newsreader again, hit that “Mark All as Read” button and start from scratch. I’ve started doing that 2-3 times a week now, and it feels glorious.

”Why Are You Reading All That News?” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

gDocs and Apple would taste great together

Merlin Mann — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 13:23:05 -0400

I’ve become an ardent Google Documents fan over the past few months — especially as its support for Safari has improved (didn’t say perfect; just improved). I use it for collaborating with clients and 43f guest authors, as well as for managing small projects and keeping various small teams organized. Personally, I find it simpler than a wiki and a lot more powerful than using a static .doc.

My favorite use right now is to use a single shared document as a common space that 4 or 5 people have access to and that they can use to give each other to-dos, ask questions, etc. I know stuff like Basecamp does this better and certainly with more sophisticated features, but I’m really attracted to the simplicity of the one-document approach — especially for informal, remote teams.

I think my gDocs cincher was the first time that it occurred to me to see if I could even look at my documents on my iPhone; I was gob-smacked to see that it actually worked. Obviously it’s not optimal for doing lots of editing, but you can see and perfunctorily edit your documents without a laptop, and that’s just pretty mind-blowing to me.

As I’m wont to blather on about on MacBreak Weekly, I just can’t rid myself of the suspicion that Apple and Google will eventually formalize a relationship around the suite of Google tools and the iPhone. It just seems like such a great fit — especially if they can work up some kind of conduit for .Mac syncing that lets you keep everything humming along without manual updating. The idea of combining iPhone portability and style with Google ubiquity and power could pose a small but fascinating challenge to conventional big business apps.

Finally, the thing that got me thinking about all this in the first place this morning is this adorable video explaining how gDocs works (thanks, Mike). As far as I’m concerned, there’s just not enough use of string in modern demonstration videos.

”gDocs and Apple would taste great together” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 22, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Simplicity

Why Are You Reading All That News?

gDocs and Apple would taste great together