If I neglect my Google Reader for just one day, the contents build up so much that perusing them becomes more tedious than anything else. I blast through them, glancing often at only the tops of images, feeling the need to empty my “New Items” as soon as possible. I suppose I feel required to stay on top of “new things” and “new” designs — lest I become instantly irrelevant for missing a passing trend. Who knows the reason why but I surely never miss a day; my Google Reader stays empty.
Recently I read an article by one of my favorite authors, Alain De Botton. The article was called On Distraction and I found this passage of particular interest:
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
I coudn’t agree more with this statement. Just think of sites like FFFFOUND, with its endless parade of sourceless and context-void images. How long do you contemplate each? Then again think of sites like this! I am as much a culprit of perpetuating this rapid culture consumption as any other blogger. I write 2-5 times per week about cool work I find, but how long do you (or I) actually spend looking at it? We glance at it, maybe visit the website, but in all likelihood it is in and out of your consciousness in less time than it took me to write the post. I’ll sometimes almost write a post on the same person twice without realizing it (this has only a few times, but is rather indicative of the problem Botton describes).
Botton’s solution to this problem is a period of culture fasting:
The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.
Taking his suggestion sounds terrifying at first. It is not something I have ever been able to do by choice — usually its a vacation that puts my Reader so far over the edge that even I can’t J/K shortcut my way out — I have only hit the dreaded “Mark all as read” button a few times. It is something I would like to explore more. I remember when I grew up I was usually only aware of a few artists/musicians at one time, but I dove deep into their catalogs. My understanding of their work was broad and I can still cite examples of how whatever it was continues to influence me.
I don’t know. The article hit home for me and I am curious what you think about it all. As a blogger, I am inclined to defend my profession of endlessly posting work for the world to consume rapidly, but Botton makes a great point that seems to indicate otherwise.
I think a lot of us would benefit greatly from a random road trip. Just get up and go. Unplug. Diet, if you will.
I go insane if I look at too many social media bookmarking sites. I can’t handle it all. It’s true that there can be too much of a good thing. When I feel over stimulated or over whelmed, I just get in my car and go and if I happen to bring my camera… take some pictures that calm me down. I just saw the video with Chase Jarvis and his work flow and I shut it off half way through because it was just TOO much for me. Seriously? All that for a photo shoot? Shit, no one is going to care 5 years from now. Which is the sad thing.
Thanks for posting this Alex. I think you’d benefit from a road trip and just disconnect yourself from everything. I’d try to explain how I feel about all this but I just drank a bottle of sake and well… I drank a bottle of sake. Yeah, nothing like a night of ISO50 and sake!
Twice recently have I driven away with the nozzle in my tank after filling up on gas. It is hilarious to share the story with friends, family (and a blog or two that I enjoy immensely) but it falls right in line with the above point. No major problems to speak of in my life aside from not being able to check in long enough to gas up and remember to remove the nozzle…so maybe there is a problem. We can speed each other up or slow each other down. But how? We have lives to live and most have livings to make. How as a culture do we continue to grow while simultaneously slowing down? I want just that. For right now I will try not to stress people out more than they already are.
It’s a serious dilemma. I can relate.
I think the “road trip” solution lasts only as long as the road trip itself. I just returned from an unplugged weekend myself. Whenever I leave, it’s easy to find much needed silence, but as soon as I return, I pick up right where I left off (I’m here via Google Reader now). Surely, there must be some way to consume it all with zero fatigue and total retention. I’ll let you guys know as soon as I figure it out…right after I tackle these pesky unread items.
Great topic. Here’s my current strategy: mark stuff that makes an impression on me as “unread”. At the end of the day, instead of having an empty inbox, you are left with the best posts of that day / week. Instead of staring at an empty page, you are left with items that demand more attention.
I am finding myself leaving more and more stuff “unread” this way, and its really great. After a while I might promote the best stuff to “starred”, share it with friends, order books, etc …
I also think part of this phenomenon comes from a UI problem. The “unread” items are bold and demand immediate attention, disrupt the balance of the clean slate. I’ve found the same problem with e-mail, I’m compelled to read messages as soon as they arrive. There have been many studies on this, but they usually conclude that “unplugging” is the only solution. Of course this never hurts, but I think there are interesting design challenges that could be considered as well.
There’s a balance waiting to be found in the presentation that would makes the unread state less aggressive and facilitates what I described earlier – re-consumption of favorites.
As a simple example: youtube’s front page shows recommendations. This is a mash-up between videos related to ones I’ve watched recently and in the past month if not more. A few times it has surprised me by popping a music video that I had enjoyed but forgetten about. The UI makes an interesting choice too: its always a 4 x 3 grid, you can close stuff you don’t like, but they’ll replace it with something else. There is no more “no unread / you are up to date”, only a continuous stream of past and future content.
It would be interesting to see similar technology / UI decisions applied to the RSS feed world.
100% agreed. I hate it, when I get back from vacation and have to spend more than one day to get “up to date” with my emails, RSS feeds and so on (and I successfully negated diving into facebook or twitter up to now). To avoid this, I start sneak-peeking to emails and RSS feeds during vacation as well, which surely distracts me from recreation.
Still I did not find any good solution to this, but what I’ve learned so far is you have to explicitely say NO to things you subscribed to that are not of importance any more. So regularly check your feeds and throw out those that feel they can be left out.
Perhaps the blogosphere has reached a state of…constrained desperation, grazing franticism – but all very subtly. Posts used to feature commentary that was insightful, relatively in depth, got a bit more into the heads of the creators (not saying that the posts here aren’t!) – now, we seem to be getting stunning images plus 50-100 words relevant to sourcing, origin of discovery, and awe/inspiration. Quick and dirty, if you will – journalists itching to keep their fingers firmly on the pulse.
Not that this behavior isn’t a direct reflection of our society’s mentality, and many creatives just want/need to visually feed and stimulate. I can’t decide if this is beneficial though. Its back to the age old Eastern vs. Western mentality discussion though, we’re constantly moving in fear that we’ll miss something, whereas we should probably take a cue from our Eastern counter parts and learn to simply be, slow down and digest.
Maybe “fasting” would bring clarity in mental direction, clarity in cultivating our own individual…I don’t know, creative genius of sorts.
Technology keeps bringing us closer to the idea that we can grasp infinity, and in this case, the near infinite visual database on the internet (in response to what you said about FFFFOUND), and we want to see it ALL. Crazy.
Very thought provoking post. Nice.
Interesting! Before the web really took off with “web 2.0”, I enjoyed culture as much as I do now but in a different manner. I guess I took more time for every song, poem, photobook or artwork I came across. Good art was harder to get your hands on or took longer to order. So I spent more time with it once I found it. For me I think that is the way culture should be consumed to get the best out of it. But I don´t now. I come across a HUGE amount of that good art or culture or debates with todays digital media and I wouldn´t trade that for good old times either…
A really timely post…I was just about to click “Mark All As Read” (on a different RSS feed, of course!) from my Google Reader, which reached 1000+ articles once again.
For a while, I believed that social media like Yelp, Twitter, Facebook were growing in popularity as a reaction to this information glut. By using each other as editors and tastemakers for content, we could curate the giant, awesome mass of MetaFilter posts and YouTube videos that constantly demanded our attention. People would experience a new sense of data “quiet,” allowing us to only recommend and consume the best of the best.
It would be the “next big thing” after the rise of the Information Economy. I would give it an awesome-yet-still-pretentious name, like “The Curation Economy” and write a million-selling iPad book.
But then I said “screw it” and caught up on my FFFfound subscription :-/
I’ve been thinking about and experiencing this quite a while. This is the one reason I find it hard to pick up any kind of blogging. It feels like it will end up unread, or become another unwelcome thread in the unread items. Same reason I ditched ffffound from my reads quite a while ago, it just became stressfull. After doing that reading my feeds became a breeze, untill offcourse I accumulated a lot of new resources. It’s slowly becomeing a wasted half an hour/hour of the day. Like flipping channels on tv. I actually speak to people who can’t start their work untill the unread items are on 0, this is mildly disturbing.
I’ve been playing with the thought of building another layer on top of my google reader. That’ll just show one unread item a day, randomly, disregarding chronology. And if you’re lucky, one day you’ll find something really sweet you can dive into. Other days you can just leave it alone. This also probably helps cleaning up your feeds, since you’ll find out in a few days that 95% of the stuff that comes by is not really of your interest.
This post is perfectly in line with the way I’ve been feeling recently.
In fact, looking at so much art, and trying to listen to all the new indie music, gives me artist’s block (or bottleneck: too many ideas and styles to explore, basically what Alain De Botton says).
I find it’s easier to create something if I shut down and don’t look at others’ work at all, because I’ve already piled up a ton of cool stuff and influences at the back of my head, and looking at anything else is not gonna help at this stage.
I remember Frank Chimero posted something similar a few weeks ago:
http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/654094925/its-hard-to-hold-it-all-in-your-head-all-the
It looks like a lot of people have been feeling this way lately.
Just for kicks, here’s my current status on Google Reader:
ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen (5)
FFFFOUND! / EVERYONE (1000+)
spacesick
Lifehacker (555)
Apartment Therapy Main (795)
mediamac.dk (51)
Changethethought™ (139)
Signalnoise.com (39)
Computerlove | Connecting Creative Talents
TypeNeu™ / TN™ / Typography News
WordPress.dk
News: dpreview.com (43)
The Strange Attractor (26)
———
What I often feel like when I see 1000+ is: Aah nice, what a lot of cool new inspiring stuff for me to dive into. Then after having “consumed” about a hundred images, I simply leave the reader not feeling guilty of not having read it all. I don’t press “mark all as read”, but come to think of it, it’s a nice way of “flushing the pipeline”.
I just had this feeling some weeks before.
My solution – at least for GReader – was to create 3 accumulator tags: _Ignore, _MustRead, and _So-So. (Start with underscore to sit on the top of the list). I then assigned all the feeds to one of the accumulator tags. This way I can decide how much time I want to spend on a day reading the news. I can also mark all the non-important items as read with one click, regardless how many folders/tags I have.
The result: super-fast GReader overview, lots of hours! saved, much less stress and way much less clicks. You can compare to a diet, but I like to see it as a way of deciding what I want to consume on a day. Also: don’t regret if you pass on something – just let it go.
I have long thought about this very same predicament. How long do I look at a picture? It must be narrowing in on a quarter of a second per image now. In the fear of missing somethng we seem to be missing everything.
In my old blog I said “just give good art a couple seconds”, but even that doesn’t help forever, as the mind slowly drifts back to rapid digestion of photography and ideas.
Even the way many blogs are written: (not this post thankfully) in the fashion of twitter, tiny and quick, just to be noticed. It seems like that all that can be accompished these days is to be noticed. Rarely do I find my self checking back for more from the same artists.
I have deleted my stumble upon and found this website (ISO50) and YAY!EVERYDAY, so it seems I have simply subsituted one for another. Perhaps it’s time to increase the diet and step away from the computer altogether from time to time. After all it is summer.
I deal with this by making sure I design some “cool stuff” if the projects that I am paid to do are not interesting.
That way, all the culture consumption becomes more of an act of research and, and less of an eating-in-front-of-television passiveness.
I really love google reader but the thing is, normally i wouldn’t visit all the blogs, websites I have there everyday. Nowadays I tend to skip some posts and some blogs get neglected because they post too much, everyday there are 11/12 posts. I have to work and most of all LIVE I can’t afford spending 30 minutes on every 4 hours of my day reading all these posts. I agree with de Boton, I get this feeling I’m missing something, but in the end I feel like I’m missing even if I have read it, I can’t assimilate all that information in such short time.
I think it’s one of the biggest challenges of our time: how to deadl with the huge amount of inputs – how to consume it, to place it into context and to express yourself in between.
I sort of got cured of my YouTube/Vimeo addiction, I ditched Google Reader, I try to do less Facebook & Twitter and I still try to minimize my Gmail use. But it’s pretty hard. I’m also on a Iso50 diet, btw.
If you really want to dive into this matter, then you could read Virilio, who came up with the notion of Dromology:
‘Dromos’ from the Greek word to race (Paul Virilio 1977:47). Meaning: the ‘science (or logic) of speed’. Dromology is important when considering the structuring of society in relation to warfare and modern media. He notes that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. ‘Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.’
But most of all, be sure to listen to ‘Slow Down’, a song from Jesse Dee, from Boston: http://www.myspace.com/jessedee
Great post Alex, and thanks for sharing the article. Above Klye said that the fear of missing something is making us miss everything, and I think that he hit on the essential issue. Fear. The compulsion to completism is really our love and passion mangled into a fear of not experiencing all of the joy possible from the things we love and are passionate about.
There are so many studies being done on what our addiction to gadgetry is doing to our brains. I know that when I wake up I compulsively check my email on my phone. I work in a studio making music but at no point during the day do I ever go more than 10-15 minutes without playing Scrabble on Facebook via my iPhone. It’s like culture and internet addiction have given me some kind of ADD. I heard this fascinating NPR interview recently on the history of the Hoover Dam, and how the man-made lake it created was so heavy it actually warped the crust of the earth and caused earthquakes. Pretty crazy to realize that a technological innovation could have such an effect on nature. But I think that we are warping the physiology of our minds in the same way that Lake Mead warped the earth’s crust. It’s going to be up to ours or future generations to confront this problem.
Better link…
Jesse Dee – Slow Down
http://vimeo.com/5092594
I’ve given up on trying to keep up. It’s pointless and kills all joy. So the unread items number doesn’t bother me – I have a core set of science and design blogs I read every day, and only worry about those. I made the same choice about music. So maybe I don’t get to the next big thing until four years after the fact. If it resonates, it resonates. I don’t need to be part of the peanut gallery the second the first tracks leak. I guess it helps that most of my favorite stuff was recorded 50+ years ago. Maybe I’m a sort of Luddite.
I unplug myself from glowing screens for at least a few waking hours each day – making a living won’t allow for more – and occasionally for days at a time. It does take an effort to unplug, but it’s like good, hard physical labor. Once you’ve done it, you feel good and relieved. I have enough of a gut instinct to feel fresh air and sunlight and get dirt under my nails that it’s not killing me to not be in touch with the constant mind suck of the internet.
One of the things I regret most about the ‘old days’ is the process of discovery. Unfolding a cassette insert and reading the liner notes. How you loved song #3 on the B side, especially the keys. Then you found out the keyboard player had his own band and also wrote songs for a female vocalist in Korea. The discovery and connections made with music were much more organic and personal. I assume the same holds true for design and visual art.
In all honesty, Alex, although you give us a lot to consume it never feels like you post stuff just for the sake of posting or being ‘the first’. You guys post what you love and it shows (or maybe I’m just looking through a rose colored monitor).
In general though, we have to recognize that there’s TOO MUCH INFORMATION and it is impossible to consume it all and/or isn’t worth trying to consume it all. Sandro Santantonio designed a new table lamp. Really…in the whole scheme of things…why should I care? To sound fly in my conversation? For a feeling of self-worth? To feel cultured? So I can have something to talk about if I run into Laura Esposto?
To avoid information overload we have to disconnect and examine our motives. Why do I follow this site? Why is all this crap in my reader (I’m just as guilty)? Separate, give your mind time to digest and actually be inspired.
Whole bunch of disconnected thoughts, but you get my drift.
I totally agree that a vacation from the immediate culture is always a good thing. For me, it is hard to get away from the world in which we thrive in (i.e. design) but, once we do and come back, it always proves to be very helpful. A couple of months ago I went through a vacation (or diet) of all social media for about 2 months. I was online for maybe 1 hour a day… just checking mail or doing stuff for my work but I totally disconnected from everything I stay involved in. My attitude changed for the better, I felt refreshed. You do sorta ‘loose disconnect’ from the trends or artist you normally follow but once you come back, it seems at lease for me, your mind is rejuvenated and ready for better work.
I like how there’s links on the comments about overloading on too much info. I appreciate the irony.
I suppose the benefit of still being a struggling artist to really work out my own style and finish a body of work is that I’m working on too many projects and once and too busy with my own work to check but a select few blogs on lunch breaks.
My solution is to be more productive and ignore the flood of what everyone else is doing every minute. Their work will still be there in a few days if you need a break from your own stuff.
Alex – great to see you made it back from Japan alive and well. Enjoyed following your photographic excursion.
The idea of “informational fasting” is highly related to The Art of Elimination. Timothy Ferris dedicates a couple chapters to this notion in his book, The Four Hour Work Week, a GREAT read. While his book is geared more toward productivity and effectiveness in life’s work and play, the idea, or process of informational and task oriented elimination can be directly applied to your post.
“It’s important for productive men to develop an uncanny ability to be selectively ignorant. It is important, imperative rather, that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable.”
And finally,
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It’s an interesting concept. We live in modern times where we feast on information. I would also argue that throughout history great culture and art usually arose out of a concentration of ideas and culture.
It’s the contemplative individual who can give shape and form to this shifting culture that ultimately magnifies it’s impact
I gave up on RSS. Done. Never. Again. Here’s a simple but easy way to solve this problem:
Make yourself type the URL and go to the websites.
If you want to look at it, you have to think about it. It has the added benefit of situating the content in the context intended rather than in feed reader.
It helped quite a bit. Having done that for a while, I’ve eased up. I now have a few folders of bookmarks in my toolbar of sites that I really care about. I limit myself to those. Sometimes I end up following a series of links, but the amount of time involved is vastly reduced.
awesome read.
re-posted.
I find the more I feed my mind with relation to design, the less creative my designs are. I re-create what I see in my feeds to an errant bend.
The best and most intricate ideas I sketch out come to me after I unplug for a while.
I think you are spot on, but I think also it’s a good thing to simply turn everything off and take a break for a little while. There are nice things in this world that we can enjoy that do not require creativity, or may spark our own creativity. I speak, as a fellow creative, of things such as playing a board game with my little brother, hanging out with friends, and even burying myself in a good book for a couple days.
And there should be no anxiety over missing the next big thing on the internet. Trends don’t leave in a week or so. And yeah, I feel you about that Google Reader. I just stopped using it and started being more selective in the things that I want to see versus subscribing to sites that post anything and everything.
I think it’s ulimately about being in control and not letting the information control you.
I use RSS as an aggregator but that doesn’t mean I feel obliged to read everything in there, every day. I have favourite sites that I will always click through their feed but if I’m busy I will just ‘mark all read’ in that session.
I also star articles that I would like to read as I am scanning and return to them later. Generally I will then clear that out every few weeks – I decide if I haven’t got to it by then it isn’t high on my priority list.
Great post..
Cheers,
Simon
are you a borges reader, alex? your dilemma sounds like it came straight out of his short story called “the library of babel.”
Alex, my advice is to plant a garden and ditch endless rss feeds. That’s what I did. Nothing better than drinking beer on a sultry summer afternoon and seeing your peppers and summer squash thriving. At the end of the day you have to consider what is nourishing and what is junk food, be it materially or intellectually.
I didn’t use the internet as a kid like I do now.
I didn’t have thousands of bookmarks. I wasn’t RSS-ing. I didn’t have followers. I wasn’t checking ffffound. I didn’t feel the need to comment. I never posted. I didn’t digg, share, tag or tweet. I was naive. I was oblivious to all of that.
But when I remember back to that time, I remember life being real. It’s almost like I was living then what I look for online now.
A few thoughts:
1. Maybe the blogosphere should learn the value of constraints from Twitter.
2. For this very reason (not being able to keep up) I prefer smaller blogs, often one person blogs that at most post once a day, or even less frequent.
My rule of thumb for you guys (ISO50) is to skip the music posts in my rss reader, and occasionally visit the actual blog to listen to some tunes. Forget FFFound like others are saying every once in a while you can visit if you need some eye candy.
3. In some ways it’s survival of the fittest, a really beautiful piece will still get my full attention, but work that is simply solid, maybe I glance over. It just makes us all work harder.
4. Alex weren’t you the guy who limited himself to 50 typefaces? With that mindset I’m sure you could cull your RSS feeds.
“lest I become instantly irrelevant for missing a passing trend.” I can’t wait for the backlash of all this “stuff”. Then I can go back to just being a Graphic Designer. I want to be really good at one thing…not average or less than average at 10 things.
I think Alex nailed it when he said:
“I remember when I grew up I was usually only aware of a few artists/musicians at one time, but I dove deep into their catalogs. My understanding of their work was broad and I can still cite examples of how whatever it was continues to influence me.”
I think that the problem today isn’t so much the information overload as it is the AVAILABILITY and ACCESSIBILITY to the information that is the problem. Why should I spend weeks or months pouring over the catalogue of a single artists (let alone the nuances of a single album) when I can get — legally, or otherwise — tons more music in a few clicks. There are even ‘top seller’ and ‘best of’ lists out there to “tell me” what I should be listening to today.
It’s perhaps not so much about disconnecting from the feed as it is taking/making the time to really get into something when it catches your attention. Making yourself listen to an album a second, third, tenth time instead of grabbing something else to listen to ’cause you’ve already heard these songs once before.
In this “Age of Information” we’re being convinced that it’s quantity over quality that matters; that it’s better to have seen some 51s YouTube clip so we’re “in the know” than admit that perhaps our RSS feed somehow missed today’s meme. We need to start looking for that “needle in a haystack” that might still be important tomorrow; go back to a quality over quantity outlook. We need to stop and see what we have, before moving on to whatever the next link is in our feeds.
Honestly, the “endlessly posting” made me stop reading this blog long time ago.
It *stressed* me.
I would like to stay in touch, What is your facebook page?
First of all, dieting is retarded. That being said, the philosophy behind it when concerning media is correct. People weren’t born with technology, we created it and without any thought to the consequences. We are only just breaching the subject of moderation, something that we sadly have not learned to do, but have to if we want to survive in the age of technology. Take it slow, take a step back, and take some time off. It sounds like it would behoove you to do some research on multitasking. NPR has some good articles on it. Also, I suggest the book call The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.
It’s funny. It’s been two weeks since I unplugged my face from Facebook. I ended up switching to Tumblr, twitter and RSSing more. Not to mention Foursquare checkins. I have an iPhone. O___o There’s this need to be part of a collective perception and at the same time establish my sense of identity… be unique… bleh.
You guys should see majority of the Tumblr’s out there. “[Most tumblr are other tumblr]. Their [content] are someone else’s [post], their lives a mimicry, their passions a [reblog].” So, apply that to self.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
— Oscar Wilde
There’s too much stuff to “like” or bookmark out here (internet). I think the internet is a place where we can find bits of pieces of stuff to make or remake self. There is no absolute self. We are constantly making….errr remaking self. As Malcolm Gladwell puts it “our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.” Iono…
I guess one could say that i’m bits and pieces of my rss feed.
But not a witch.
O____oh. I reblogged this post.
This constant connection is actually some type of disconnection.
I’m not able to view this website properly on chrome I think there is a downside