Getting Ready for 2006.
I’m not doing enough to get ready for 2006. And I recognize that I need to do more. But what I’d like you to take out of this, is that a date like New Year’s is arbitrary. It seems like a natural new beginning, but wouldn’t the most natural beginning be when you’re good and ready? Even if it’s February? Or on a day other than the 1st?
I will do more when I’m ready. Today is not the day to stress myself out with too many resolutions and projects. But I think I will do one thing today, and that is cut down my RSS feed reading. I have certainly gotten better in the past year in realizing that I don’t need to read every new post that pops up in the feeds I read. I have over 100 feeds, but review 88 daily right now. Reviewing them does not mean that I read all 88 each day. Some I let sit for days depending on the title, the excerpt, the topic, my mood, and a whole lot of factors.
There are times when I think I could read more, because I get through them and only a small portion post every day, but there are also times when I think 88 feeds is too many for me.
As an example, John Batelle’s Searchblog is one of the 88 feeds I review each day. He posted 84 times in the month of December. Now, I think it’s very difficult to gauge when you are posting too frequently or infrequently to your blog(s) for your audience. I suspect that Mr. Batelle’s rate is right. Besides, he’s promoting a book, which requires lots of marketing. Posting quality content about search somewhere around 84 times in a month certainly makes me think he has quality content in his book, “The Search”. At the very least, it shows he has his pulse on the field he’s writing about. So what’s the problem? Well, it’s not that his posts aren’t interesting. In fact, he doesn’t tend to post something that’s already been posted a million times (at least in the blogs I read), unless he’s adding something to the conversation. (Reblogging is something that really bothers me, as you can read here and here.) The problem is that the search field is interesting to me, but doesn’t change anything about my life or work. I can do basic SEO, and could be a consultant in that area to many people, so keeping my pulse on the field seems like a good idea. But, I am not an SEO consultant right now, and reading his site is just one of many things that takes minutes out of my day. Besides, would his site actually help me be a better SEO consultant? Not enough that I must review and/or read it each day. As a law student, I don’t read every single case that comes out on contracts, torts, property, IP, employment discrimination, medical malpractice, etc. Reading website feeds is keeping up on every single thing that comes out in a certain field. I’m going to read feeds more like an attorney should. I’m thinking that this probably entails keeping up with the field I’m in, and researching fields when an issue comes up. It’s a bit more complicated than that, obviously, but cut me some slack as this post is already becoming verbose.
The idea here, is that I don’t need to be reading about search all the time, even if it’s an interest of mine, because it’s taking away time from doing things that are of interest. On occasion, in downtime, I may go back and read what I’ve missed, but I just can’t have that feed looking at me every day, so it’s getting cut.
Other blogs getting cut? Blogpire, Weblog Empire, Webby Media, About Weblogs, Creative Weblogging, Weblogs, Inc., and b5media corporate/headquarter blogs. Why? I’m also reading Performancing, ProBlogger, Blog Herald, and Blog Network Watch, which generally cover anything newsworthy. If I was really smart, I’d cut all of those too, because they generally keep me reading and not writing. When was the last time I actually got something out of those sites that I printed out or made sure I wrote down or remembered? Not in a long while. I just need to write more at this point before I can take some of the advice at ProBlogger and Performancing, at the very least. Even after writing more, I suspect I’ve gotten all I can get out of those sites. We’re generally dealing with information that is based on opinion and experimentation, which I can do myself. And I’m generally smart enough to know and/or write the stuff that I am reading. (Arrogant statement? Perhaps. If this post wasn’t so long already, I’d give an example of what I mean.)
In 2006, I’m going to try and cut some of the clutter of feed reading so I can get to doing things faster.
