Friday, June 22, 2012

Sensory overload

Information overload4Another lesson I learned on our vacation, one that has nothing to do with Route 66 or travel in general, is that I need to cut down on my news and other feeds.

When we were gone, I read almost nothing online. I would usually have CNN on when we were getting ready to head out for the day, and I’d get breaking news updates on my phone. But otherwise, I just marked all my feeds as “read.”

I had to do it. There just wasn’t time enough in the day to do our traveling, enjoy our lunches, dinners, and wandering about, and then write a blog entry at night about it all (which we both wanted to do...not only for your enjoyment, but to chronicle everything as it happened).

I realized that it was quite liberating to detach myself from these feeds; I had no qualms as I clicked “Mark all as read” and no fears that I was missing out on some important nugget of information. I was connected, in case anyone needed to reach me, and I was updating people who we would be seeing along the way, but I wasn’t spending much time weeding through news stories. It was actually a relief!

So I started making some changes this week. I still have plenty of personal blogs that I read, and those friends will continue to see occasional comments from me. On every entry? Probably not, but that was a change I made a while back. I was much more merciless when it came to news and “fun” feeds. One of the first to go was 9GAG, which was a lot of fun for a while, but deteriorated into probably 75+ entries a day of bad drawings and overdone memes; a few other similar sites also bit the dust. I deleted a few political blogs that were heavy on the sarcasm and short on facts. There were a couple of blogs that update rarely, if ever in the past year, and those went, too.


I haven’t lost my interest in these things, and I still plan on keeping up with the news. I mean, come ON...this is Beth we’re talking about here! That isn’t going to change. But as I get back to my usual reading pace, I needed to downsize a bit. At least my downsizing doesn’t screw over the American worker!

7 comments:

  1. You do know that I get a fair share of my national and international news from your feeds, right? How else do I supplement my NPR informational diet if you are going to cut back on your feeds and sharing..?

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  2. I've done this, too, and it helps - especially during an election year. I loved your posts from your trip and meant to comment more than I did, but I read some of them on my phone, and it's too tedious on there. I'd love to take Route 66 like you and Ken did someday.

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  3. That is what I did with Facebook a few months back...

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  4. I think everyone cuts back now and then. We all get busy and it's all time consuming but nice to return to now and then.

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  5. A Route 66 trip kind of chills you out, doesn't it? Priorities change, blood pressure evens out, and memories sustain you for a long time. You're a true roadie.

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  6. Beth it was great following your trip along rt 66..you made it very interesting, I know that I will never get to travel like that again so I enjoyed living vicariously through your words...thanks...Sandi

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  7. I do this type of culling every few months. I don't read as many blogs as I used to, don't comment as often on the ones I do read, and will "mark as read" if I get too far behind on them. It's a good thing to do.

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I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?