It can’t be that difficult eradicating useless blog feeds… so says a friend of mine the morning of my second day of simplification. I laughed nervously. I was on the verge of telling PSP Fanboy we can’t be friends anymore, expressing remorse to Gawker, and giving Joystiq the silent treatment. The hardest of all was yet to come.

…Where to start?

Having began the day with seventy eight subscriptions, I had a lot of excess on my hands. I did what any self-respecting blog-writing-test-subject would do and came up with a process!

1. Separate the reading material into three categories aptly named 1, 2, and 3 based on their importance to me and my life.
2. Eliminate everything in the (3) category.
3. Review each blog in the (2) category, piece by piece.
4. Re-categorize the blogs into (less then five) easy to understand categories.
5. Grab some tissues

Deep Breath… Step 1

This was surprisingly not difficult. (if you want the technical nitty-gritty, comment and I’ll explain step by step!) I went through and chose (for category 1) blogs that fell under mission-critical status. These included work related, world event related, and personal development related blogs. For category 2, I went through and picked the blogs I enjoyed but were not of the level of importance as category 1. Category 3 was like those magazines you keep out on the coffee table for parties.

Cringe… and Delete (Step 2)

A moment of silence should go here for the deletion of category three… Okay. This was difficult, but it left me with roughly twenty five less blogs than I had started out with at the beginning of the day. In total, that meant over seventy articles less a day! Now I’m wondering why I spent the time and effort on these in the first place. *sigh*

Step 3, Now This Was Painful…

Definitely the longest step, for me, step 3 brought tears of sadness with different blogs (see above). All of my gaming blogs had to go. This may seem trite to some and blasphemous to others but it boiled down to the importance gaming played in my life. Did it really serve me? For what I want in life, was it important to have? Did it even make a difference? As much as I wanted to answer yes to these questions, the response in me echoed inextricably NO every time. These were not nearly as difficult as my cutting off my steady IV of gadget pr0n… That which is Engadget.

For the Uninitiated…

Pr0n is another word for porn. The word pr(zero)n came about in the early years of the internet. The history is not as important as its meaning now. Here and throughout, I use the word to refer to high quality, almost devilish material of any sort. For instance, gadget pr0n refers to the lustful gaze one has while reading Engadget.

Step 4, A Breather

For simplicity sake, (and to show off my l33tness! he…he… yeah I know) I split up my blog feeds into four categories: ed1t0r, pl4y, pr0n, w0rk. Each category has its own importance in my viewing of it. The category ed1t0r lists the blogs I write and edit for. That’s simple enough. I only need this category when viewing the final product of any of my posts. Then there’s pl4y (’play’ for the uninitiated). Play consists of the blogs I read for personal development. These are like Lifehacker, Slashdot, or Linux Today. W0rk consists of blogs I use for work purposes like ProBlogger and Foreign Policy.

Then pr0n…

This was the hardest category to even keep, but its purpose is above that of normal pr0n. Pr0n consists of anything that I simply like but doesn’t fit any personal development or work goals. However, each blog I kept has a major purpose. We all need entertainment (so I kept xkcd.com, Penny Arcade, Megatokyo, LOLcats and Ctrl-Alt-Del). Those are easy to define. Then came Treehugger and Make Magazine’s blog. These are some of my highest volume blogs, so why would I keep them around? Well, the justification lies in the sponsoring of problem solving these blogs have. Headlines from Treehugger makes me think, “You know, maybe that is a good idea.” Headlines from Make Magazine bridges my curiosity of ‘how can I do that?’. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this category. If any of these become too much, they’re out.

Step 5 or How I…

It’s difficult cutting my blog reading in half. On top of this, the new categories fit into the blocks of time I have for work, play, and down time. In my day, I attempt to set aside full two hour blocks for each of these activities with no spillover (although the two hour block can be extended up to four in certain areas such as gigantic blog posts). So now, I’ve cut down on my reading, and when I do it. On to tomorrow! Oh and this spawned a new mantra for me:

I will only keep around that which serves a positive role on the stage of my life and studio of the world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Days 11-20.