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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Greg Knauss on personal "info-glut"

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.

TOPICS: Life Hacks, Links
Seanco » I’m an information glutton's picture

[...] This article struck a...

[...] This article struck a chord with me because I realized that it was talking about me–well not about me but I exhibit the same characteristics. I have gigs of podcasts that have gone unlistened to, tons of RSS feeds never read, saved articles never opened or read, hours of downloaded video that will never be watched–you get the picture. I've suffered from the fear that if I don't attach all these pipelines to myself I'll miss out on some important piece of vital information that I may need on day in 2058. However, what winds up happening important information gets buried, and resources are wasted (i.e. disk space and my time trying to manage it) that could be put to better purposes.  [...]

 
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