Overwhelmed by information
Every day I carve out time to read on my Kobo. It can be during breakfast in the morning, 15-20 minutes during my lunch break, 10 minutes in a medical office waiting for an appointment. But most of my reading I do at night, after work, that's when I can have 30 minutes to 1 hour or more to sit down and read.
And I've been really focusing on this habit. It's now part of who I am. But I gave up other things to be able to keep reading that much. I don't have the habit of watching YouTube, except for when I want to research about a topic, like an author interview or a book review I am curious to watch, or the occasional video my partner will invite me to watch with him.
I also gave up mainstream social media years ago. I still have a Mastodon account that I've been using less and less. I've been feeling I'm not getting too much out of it, and I get overwhelmed by the different topics going on, all showing up one after the other, I don't like the Twitter-like format that much.
I still subscribe to a few newsletters, and I still use a RSS feed reader. I think RSS feeds are great for the “consume at your pace” type of deal. But even this will overwhelm me. I have been adding personal blogs feeds to my reader and now I have 70 feeds I'm subscribed to. And it's a lot for me! I want to get it down to a more manageable number.
So, I guess, what I want to say is that I've been experiencing information overload, and it's competing with my favorite downtime activity, which is reading books.
Maybe I've been so much time away from the current noisy and chaotic internet feeds that my level of comfort with new information coming at me has changed. I want some space.
I've deleted my RSS feed app from my phone. I will read my feeds only when I'm at a computer, once or twice a week. I think it will make this activity more mindful. My next step will be do some curation on my list of feeds to make it less overwhelming.
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Post 35/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
#100DaysToOffload #100Days #Blaugust2024 #Blaugust #journal #digitalminimalism #socialmedia
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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.