Help Me Scale Back My Digital Life

July 2, 2006 1:54 PM

Help! Lately, I have found that technology has truly become a burden rather than something that is fun and productive for me. I have multiple email addresses, domains, Flickr accounts, del.icio.us accounts, Bloglines, on and on and on. It has got to where I am so deluged with information that I have found my mind going to mush. It's almost scary......no, scratch that....it IS scary. However, I think the above may be the reason. Good old, "information overload." I know that sounds so cliché - but it's all too real for me. Can MeFites help and offer ideas to scale back and maybe offer ideas for doing as much as I possibly can through the interface of ONE SITE? I'm slowly going crazy trying to "keep up," proving, for me at least, that less is probably going to be more. Thanks in advance.
posted by Gerard Sorme to Computers & Internet (23 answers total)

Information overload isn't "real" your brain will adapt to new ways of doing things. you just have to be a little patient. Your mind isn't actually going to mush at all, it's growing.
posted by Paris Hilton at 2:01 PM on July 2, 2006

Response by poster: Information overload isn't "real" your brain will adapt to new ways of doing things. you just have to be a little patient. Your mind isn't actually going to mush at all, it's growing.

Thanks for the response, but I read this all over the Internet and it's just false. At least it is for me. Our lives are moving too fast, "information overload" is very real. If anybody has ideas on scaling all these various services and online toys into something more useful and productive for me, I would be very appreciative. But just upfront - I'm not interested in debating the issue of "your brain will adapt" I have studied this myself and have been waiting for this adapting since I got into computers in 1985. It's slowly progressed to be a mind-numbing experience and I feel out-of-touch with all that is real.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 2:11 PM on July 2, 2006

Get one gmail addresss, forward all the rest to it. You can set gmail up to "Send As" if required, and you can have it label things as they come in.

You're already using bloglines: it can handle everything else. Delicious has feeds, so does Flickr. Hell, so does Gmail. I've gone down from checking 6 or more sites regularly to checking Bloglines alone.
posted by bonaldi at 2:12 PM on July 2, 2006

This old question is similar and may be useful, and this one is about information overload more generally (and is a good read).
posted by introcosm at 2:20 PM on July 2, 2006

there are some answers in this thread that might be of some help.
posted by nitsuj at 2:36 PM on July 2, 2006

Sounds like you might like 43 Folders. They have a lot of articles and discussion about using technology effectively without being overwhelmed.

My (rather obvious) suggestion would be to quit everything (except possibly email) for a week, and then at the end of the week give up every site/information source that you didn't miss. Chances are it'll be most of them. And spend some time enjoying books which are a very different experience to the bits-and-pieces you get on the web. Somehow spending time reading a novel can feel very indulgent compared to surfing the web but it's probably better for you. And call your friends for a change!
posted by teleskiving at 2:36 PM on July 2, 2006

Response by poster: @bonaldi: I am in the process of forwarding everything to one gmail address. It had never occurred to me to use Bloglines to monitor the mail. How long between polling on Bloglines for new gmail messages? Do you know? Great idea.

@introcosm: I have pulled up those threads and am printing them out so I can look over them leisurely over the holiday. Thanks for those links. On cursory glance, they seem to be very good! Thank you!
posted by Gerard Sorme at 2:38 PM on July 2, 2006

I had a similar quandary as yours, and decided to split my interests among different browsers, so I could focus on one thing at a time without the others intruding upon it.

It's lovely to have a choice of browsers that open several windows at once - therefore I could set one browser to only work-related sites, and then I used another browser for outdoors-oriented sites (a passion of mine), another for other one for photography etc...

Beforehand, I used to feel not only overwhelmed by all the information that was hurtling towards me, but I was also quite distracted when I was working on projects or even when I was surfing for fun.

Separating interests among different browsers and folders (or even machines!) might be a solution for you.
posted by seawallrunner at 2:42 PM on July 2, 2006

Response by poster: @teleskiving: I like Merlin at 43 Folders very much. Your idea on going cold-turkey for a week and seeing what I miss and what I don't is one I will consider. It seems radical - as we've become so entrenched in the web, but it makes perfect sense.

Keep the ideas coming! I am especially looking for a service that can do a lot of things from one interface. I'm thinking photos, blog, storage, etc.

By the way, I gave up the PDA a long time ago and could never go back. My paper system feels so much better, always handy, no batteries or charging and I carry a small notebook in my back pocket that all thoughts, ideas, to-do lists, etc. go to. That one small step has helped. If there's something important enough to be "backed up," I scan it and put it into my GSNotes program. That thing has really helped with my offline organization.

This discussion just feels healthy.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 2:50 PM on July 2, 2006

It polls once an hour, which is more than enough if you're trying to deal with overload.
posted by bonaldi at 3:15 PM on July 2, 2006

I recently created a mind map of all my email accounts and profiles and subscriptions and feeds. It looked like spaghetti. (Yahoo is really the worst - you can have multiple profiles and multiple email addresses associated with each, increasing the complexity exponentially.)

In the interest of simplicity, while still keeping some privacy and also one half-step ahead of spammers, I am paring down my collection of email accounts to six:

1) gmail - personal - for use by family and close friends only

2) gmail - cooking lists subscriptions (I don't check this account much, but I like gmail's search feature - it's my own online cookbook)

3) a Netidentity account - professional use only

4) gmail - general interest subscriptions, but not personal (again, one I don't check regularly, but the search feature at gmail makes it a handy resource.)

5) Bloglines email subscription - for online use - one for each retailer (The advantages of creating one disposable address for each retailer are I can easily see where spam comes from, and I can delete it easily if I DO get spam.)

I use pop3 to get mail from #1 and #3 into Outlook. I'll check #2 only when I'm looking for a recipe. Sometimes I'll download #4, but mostly I read on the web when I have time. I know that nothing going to #4 needs my attention. It's an online Read & Review area, if you're familiar with GTD.

I keep Bloglines open all day. I'm trying to narrow my feeds down to the handful that provide unique content. In my original excitement at using RSS, I subscribed to every feed from every site anybody ever mentioned, and now I'm finding a lot of overlap in content.

Also, I created a folder in my Bloglines account for new feeds that I call "On Probation". If I haven't looked at those feeds in some length of time (usually a week or so), I delete them without fretting too much. That has cut down on a lot of the feeds I was [not] reading because they seemed "required", like different news feeds, or certain less-content-heavy ones related to my profession.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 3:25 PM on July 2, 2006

yahoo is kind of retarded but I use their email & have found my.yahoo.com to be very useful for this, it's basically an rss aggregator...I also use macs & found a dashboard widget for it that updates whenever you want; it's really helped me with obsessive web browsing at work, i can just look at dashboard sometimes & everything I used to go online for shows up in 1 little box, including new email. I don't really like yahoo though & am looking for something a little more elegant along those lines.
posted by octavia at 3:33 PM on July 2, 2006

Best answer: I did this. But think about going further. Reach for the "shut down" option on your computer.

Do consolidate. But then, turn the computer OFF unless you really need it. That one step has made my life so much easier and it's amazing how long a day is now - how much MORE I can do when I'm not staring at pixels. I came to a realization about a year ago that for the most part, the web and all its associated "social goodness" isn't social at all - it's ANTI social. So I turned it off.

I ditched my domain name, all 4 email accounts associated with it, stopped checking up on many favorite sites, deleted about a hundred bookmarks, and generally check 3 sites a day: this one and two other newsy/techie sites, and I'll hit popurls once in a while for a good old fashioned surf. I have three email accounts now - work, comcast, and a throwaway gmail account. I never check the gmail or the comcast one.

You don't need this technology or this information to survive. I found that about 90% of the data being "fed" to me was useless, utter crap. I don't miss any of it, and on the days I start thinking about what I could be missing on those old sites, I go outside and stare at a leaf for a while and that brings me back into my skin. Life's short enough without burning through 3+ hours a day looking at...junk.

Here's how it works on a Sunday: about an hour of this boob tube, followed by an hour of the other boob tube a little later. In both cases, unless I'm in front of em, they're both off and a little music is playing. At work, only the essential work apps are running, no frivolous surfing.

Incredibly freeing.
posted by disclaimer at 3:52 PM on July 2, 2006 [10 favorites]

I keep bloglines _out_ of my constant firefox tabs. I'll start it up once a week, maybe, and watch the clock.

Flickr: I'm letting my subscription lapse. That isn't until 2008, though. And I already have my own "weblog" where I can share photos anyway. Instead of pushing 200 photos into Flickr, I can push the best three or so into my weblog.

Don't even try to keep up with metafilter, digg, reddit, it all comes around again and again.
posted by user92371 at 4:07 PM on July 2, 2006

Get off the computer entirely for a week, or longer. It might help you get in tune with what's really important in your life.
posted by rinkjustice at 4:18 PM on July 2, 2006

Here's what I did to get out of my Web overload rut: I got a job that along with school took up almost all my free time. When I wasn't at that job or in class, I was out spending time with friends. Then when I did check things online, it was actually interesting and fulfilling—there were always lots of updates to read, as opposed to the slow trickle of updates I used to experience when I was checking every half hour.

You need to force yourself to just...stop...and then you'll realize how little of it is actually important.
posted by limeonaire at 4:28 PM on July 2, 2006

Response by poster: There are so many great ideas in this thread. So many, in fact, I hate to name names as I'll leave someone out. However, with that said, I have to mention disclaimer's answer which may be one of my favorite posts ever here at AskMe. My problem - and maybe the solution - was nailed. Thanks for that - you can only guess how much it was needed.

In my search for a single service that can serve many functions, (while awaiting responses to my question), I found Multiply. A kind of "grown-up's MySpace. Very streamlined and offering a nice blog, free and unlimited photo-hosting, video-hosting, calendar, etc. This may be one solution to paring down and bringing several things under one umbrella.

I can't tell you how helpful many of these suggestions have been. But disclaimer, your "...on the days I start thinking about what I could be missing on those old sites, I go outside and stare at a leaf for a while and that brings me back into my skin," was priceless. Great post.

Feel free to keep posting ideas. Hopefully, this thread can help others searching the archives tame the digital tiger - and bring a little sanity back to life.

Thanks!
posted by Gerard Sorme at 5:13 PM on July 2, 2006

Re: feeds. I have around 15 feeds I read daily, and my rule is that if I add another one, I have to delete one of the old ones.
posted by dhruva at 6:25 PM on July 2, 2006

There really is very little useful imformation. To find it you have to wade though a lot of useless stuff. The more useless stuff you can tolerate the more likely to find the good. Take a few days off and then get back to it. Don't be an imformation wimp.
posted by zackdog at 1:05 AM on July 3, 2006

One interface for blog, rss, flickr... sounds like Flock to me. I'm about to consolidate all my 'online stuff' there, and have already decided that if I can't fit a site in, or a specific doo-dah won't work with Flock then it gets chucked.
posted by snowgoon at 7:51 AM on July 3, 2006

Consolidentity (self link) started to be developed for exactly that.. but I sort of lost steam. It's useable as is, though, and given feedback I'd probably go back to working on it again.
posted by twiggy at 11:10 PM on July 5, 2006

Jesus, some of these simple lives would drive me crazy. And some of the advice is very bizarre to me. Having a personal domain can make things much simpler. Just letting it expire does nothing, is either here nor there.

But disclaimer, your "...on the days I start thinking about what I could be missing on those old sites, I go outside and stare at a leaf for a while and that brings me back into my skin," was priceless. Great post.

You might want to check out some jack handy quotes. They're along the same line.
posted by justgary at 12:12 AM on July 6, 2006

Something I found really useful was a tool that kicked me off the computer periodically. Originally it was to reduce repetitive stress syndrome, but I found it much more useful to make sure I stepped out on the balcony and soaked up some sunshine. If I was doing something important, then I'll remember it when I get back (after washing dishes, watching birds, or folding laundry... whatever). Otherwise, I'll check my to-do list and see what I still needs doing.

There's plenty of RSS clock timer tools, but most of them have too many widgets. For Win32, there's Oostime is efficient, and has the "Force Breaks" option that steals your mouse and keyboard during the timeout. For Linux, xwrits is recommended by jwz. If you ditched your PDA for more efficient tech, maybe you would benefit from a quiet egg-timer kept next to your keyboard to remind you to walk away.

Every half-hour, I get locked out of my computer, I might be frustrated but I'll mutter "obey the clock" and do something else. It doesn't keep me away from the computer, but it makes sure I'm not spending too much time in front of the boob screen.
posted by Mozai at 7:52 AM on July 6, 2006