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.

Introduction to personal metadata

Lately I’ve seen a lot of new tools, be it web apps or gadgets, that help us keep track of the things we do on a daily basis. Wether it be tracking weight, food eating, exercise, sleep, or any of the many of other activities to track. Like my new fitbit.

Personally I have tracked certain activities for a few years, primarily my diet and exercise. Lately, I’ve been expanding the data that I track and the tools I use to track the data.

As they say you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

This is the beginning of series of posts in which I’m hopping to talk about the tools that I’m using and other tools that are out there to track and manage our actions, or as I call it “personal metadata”.  Brad Feld has had some interesting posts on this subject which he calls human instrumentation here, here, and here, Bryce Roberts also has discussed this, as as well.

Stay tuned to the tag personal metadata for details on the tools I’m using.

My FitBit finally arrived!

It’s been a long time of waiting (not as much as some, thankfully), but I came home this evening to find my new FitBit waiting for me! Setup was a breeze and now I’m headed out to relax after the week. But I’ll post more details later. I got the FitBit to add to my personal data tracking which I’ve been drafting a series of posts about, hopefully I’ll be able to at least introduce the series in the next few days!