Finding My Voice / Headline culture
For a few years I've worked off and on a programatic solution to a problem
not many people seem to have, or, be aware they have. At some point I
realized I was suffering from an entirely self-created "implicit todo-list
stress". Be it my Email Inbox, or my Unread RSS Article count, each, and
every one of these sources required my unerring attention.
I've heard of many people going minimal at this point, but this isn't...
"My Thing". I guess you could say I did the opposite.
I recall the day Merlin Mann appeared, and Inbox Zero became the thing to
achieve. I took the decision, I would Inbox Zero my Pocket ('Read it Later'
at the time) list. I worked for months on the cleanup. 99% of the articles
had been either obsoleted by articles I'd already read, or - contrary to
how I was thinking at the time I'd enqueued it - simply weren't all that
important.
But the 1%? They made the months of clean up worth while, by a long margin!
I was grinning cheek to cheek, day after day. To read! What a gift!
For me the evil was not that I consumed too much, it was that I for years
had been enqueueing, but what did I have to show for it? You see, it turns
out for the last few years I haven't been so much reading, as, well, just
making lists.
On realizing this it became clear to me this had to change. I simply
couldn't bear the idea that those 1% had almost slipped away. I vowed to
limit the time collecting and maximize the time indulging.
Months later however... my inboxes were in much the same state.
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