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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

"You can't keep up." - Feels like I'm drowning in new information all the time.

Creating Passionate Users: The myth of "keeping up":
"You can't keep up. There is no way. And trying to keep up will probably just make you dumber.You can never be current on everything you think you should be...

Why do we pressure ourselves? Why do we constantly feel like we're struggling to keep up, yet never succeeding?

...So... it's time to let that go. You're not keeping up. I'm not keeping up. And neither is anyone else. At least not in everything...

Besides letting go, what else can we do to combat Information Anxiety? I have just a few tips, but I'm hoping you'll add more:

Find the best aggregators

Get summaries

Cut the redundancy!

Unsubscribe to as many things as possible

Recognize that gossip and celebrity entertainment are black holes [Hi Sandy! - Rob]
It's like watching a car accident despite our best intentions... we just can't help look, so the more you can stay away from the publications that document every personal detail of every music and film star the better. Let that be your guilty pleasure for when you're at the dentist's office...

Pick the categories you want for a balanced perspective, and include some from OUTSIDE your main field of interest

Be a LOT more realistic about what you're likely to get to, and throw the rest out.
Don't file it. Don't store it. What you don't have piling up you can't feel guilty about.


...In the meantime, take a deep breath and repeat after me, "I will never keep up. Keeping up is a myth." And if it makes you feel any better, add, "John isn't keeping up either."

Once we let go of trying to be more-current-than-thou, we can spend more time on things that really matter. "

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