Reducing the content I consume for more simple living

Lately through my “personal metadata experiment” I have been noticing I am spending a lot of time-consuming content that I feel I have a NEED to consume. The majority of this content is news (via google reader and email alerts), twitter, and podcasts. While I really do love consuming this content it take a lot of time out of my day, furthermore, it is a never-ending fire hose of data. As a result, I’m always left feeling like there is more data that I NEED to consume and it ends up taking time away from other tasks and interactions I would rather be doing.

So this weekend I have been going through my google reader list, newsletters, and people I am following on Twitter and unsubscribing from everything that feel I don’t NEED to read or follow. I’m going to keep a list of the feeds and people who I have unsubscribed from in case I find myself needing to add these sources back. Taking an approach of extreme cutting, and then adding back as need be. This is one step I am taking in an effort to simplify parts of my life and provide more time for productive tasks and to spend less time trying to “keep current”.

One thing that I am looking for are suggestions of highly refined, high quality, and low volume RSS feeds you enjoy consuming.

365 project blog update

Visitors to my blog will notice that the home page is almost all posts from my 365 project, a photo project which challenges me to take a photo everyday. First, I’ve found it pretty difficult to take a photo everyday, especially in the winter where I am working indoors during all hours of daylight. There really are only so many photos I can take of my office, home, and commute. As a result, going through the motion of trying to post a photo each day to the blog helps motivate the daily photo taking. That said, all the 365 project posts drowned out the more meaningful posts of this blog. I have considered moving these post over to a tumblr blog, but that is just one more platform to deal with. So I’ve decided I’m going to keep posting the 365 project photos to this blog, however, they will be excluded from the home page and for the same reasons the photography category which is accessible from the “Photography” tab at the top of the page.

The 365 project post can be found by selecting the tumblelog tab at the top of the blog, the 365 project category on the right sidebar, and they will remain in the RSS feed. It will take some time to move all the posts over (as I can’t seem to find a way to easily batch remove categories from posts).

Fun with fortune cookies #3

Another good fortune cookie. If only it wealth were that easy.

Work hard and you will become more wealthy.

Hit up the tag “fortune cookies” for other fortune cookies.

365 project – 138/365 – 2/11/2010

Today’s 365 project photo. As always the Flickr set is here.

138/365 – 2/11/2010

Got to get the snow off the roof!

365 project – 137/365 – 2/10/2010

Today’s 365 project photo. As always the Flickr set is here.

137/365 – 2/10/2010

It’s a blizzard out there again!

The power of time off

Another great TED clip I watched the other day. The power of time off. While taking time off to recharge is something that is often thought/ talked about by employers I feel most people feel it’s “the man” preaching to “look good” to their employees. I’ll admit, I’ve felt that way about some of my employers before. I don’t think such an amount of time off is warranted in most positions (including mine, despite how much I may  want it), I have see how powerful it can by through my aunt, Helen Milner, a professor.

Maybe Stefan has a point, as people are working longer into their lives in modern western society maybe it makes sense to consider breaking up those 40+ years of career work with a sabbatical year every so often in return for fewer retired years.

I know I’ll start thinking about planning a sabbatical year in the next decade.

The blizzard of 2010 (aka Snowpocalypse 2010)

Over the weekend DC was hit by a massive blizzard dumping up to 30 inches of snow across the region (for those of you who don’t already know). I chose to stay warm indoors and not venture out in the blizzard or travel too far around the city. After the snow stopped falling on Saturday afternoon I ventured out around my neighborhood. Below is a slide show I snapped with my pocket camera as I and the neighborhood frolicked in all the new snow (lots of sledding). Nothing fancy or artistic.

Click the image to play the slide show

Or visit the Flickr set here

365 project – 134/365 – 2/7/2010

Today’s 365 project photo. As always the Flickr set is here.

134/365 – 2/7/2010

The endless piles of snow in the aftermath of the snomg 2010

365 project – 133/365 – 2/6/2010

Today’s 365 project photo. As always the Flickr set is here.

133/365 – 2/6/2010

The end of the blizzard of 2010 people out roaming the streets.

365 project – 132/365 – 2/5/2010

Today’s 365 project photo. As always the Flickr set is here.

132/365 – 2/5/2010

The beginning of the blizzard of 2010