Cutting clutter
Posted by Trey Reeme on August 1st, 2007
I began this morning with 172 RSS feeds. After an hour of purging, it’s now down to 70. This will probably save me ten hours a month.
The Garland Group’s Mark McSpadden uses the following as his email signature. As of today, I’ve started doing the same:
Did I just sound like a jerk? If I came across as a little short, it may be due to the fact that I am currently experimenting with different disciplines of email writing. I am currently limiting all my emails to 3 sentences or less. Sound interesting? Read more at http://three.sentenc.es and help cut down on email clutter.
For all you Twitter haters out there, it’s much more efficient for me to text “delayed in DC” to Twitter than it does for me to call five different people to say the same thing. It turns into: “Hey, what’s going on?... I’m just calling to let you know I’m delayed at Reagan… I don’t know, something to do with bad weather in Indy. What’s new there?... [Blah, blah, blah for five minutes, then on to the next call].”
Finally, I haven’t had a home phone in four years. I haven’t missed it once.
Sure, this post has nothing to do with credit unions, but maybe it’ll help if you’re looking to cut the clutter.
Heck yes.
Heck yes.
Trey,
Thanks for the shout out. I’ve really been on a de-clutter kick lately, and much of the credit goes to the book Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst. While I don’t do everything Mr. Hurst suggests, it really helped me get into the mindset to control my digital information and I highly recommend it.
Good luck with the de-cluttering
PS. Yes I do realize the irony of using a wordy disclaimer to explain shorter emails :)
I used to have Google Reader as my homepage…but the ridiculous amount of input that slapped me in the face each time I opened my browser was becoming painful. So I made a new homepage that looks like this:
http://myskitch.com/itsjustbrent/this_is_a_homepage.-20070801-120521/
It has helped a lot to keep my mind less noisy.
And to echo one of Charlie’s Twitters, I haven’t kept up with feeds at all for the past several weeks. This has a lot to do with the fact that I also have 150+ subscriptions. It’s too much, folks.
Also, Tim Ferriss’ ‘How to Check E-mail Twice a Day… or Once Every 10 Days’ helps to dial down the info overload, if you can pull it off.
Here’s to summertime spring cleaning.
Sorry the skitch screenshot URL didnt post as a link. M’bad.
Here’s the clickable version, for the lazies like myself:
Cleanest Homepage Ever
I finally tracked down the guy that started the whole “sentences” thing, Mike Davidson
I might even like his disclaimer better:I don’t think I can do this…but I’m thinking about it.
But what about the lost art of conversation? Should we just burp data at each other? Shouldn’t content drive communication instead of character limits, whether self-imposed or otherwise? And this is not just for those of us who are paid by the word! :)
Rob, good call on the term “data burp.” Last one to register databurp.com is a rotten egg!
But to bat around the idea, totally off the cuff, I don’t think the art of conversation is lost as much as it is evolving. I still have soaringly artful conversations people when it’s time for soaring artsiness. But through a good piece of the work day, we have to churn through a lot of information and quickly. Sometimes I just need fairly raw data without the “How about this weather?”
There is a time for data burps and a time for art…....to every season?............turn, turn, turn?...........
Anyway, this was off the cuff, so anyone feel free to drop an “indicative of a bigger problem” comment directly after this one. I love me a good “indicative of a bigger problem” comment.
Seriously. I kind of collect them.
I love it! You guys are cracking me up! I’m with Roger thought, I could never do it! Limit myself to 3 scentences? Come on! You’ve seen my posts! Are they ever short and to the point? NO! That’s just not me. I’m a chatter! Even my members stand and chat with me! It’s a good thing I’m in a slow office, cuz you get the right member in here and we will be here for 1/2 hour just chatting away . . . not so much about the weather, but our kids, the crap they paved the streets with . . . etc.
But, am I going to take offense if someone burps data at me? Nah, not so much. I can respect that not everyone’s office is as slow as mine. People have things to do. I’m good with that.
I guess what I’m saying, in a “data burp” is . . . Charlie, I second you! There is a time for each. Keep on turning! :)
The Three Sentences idea is intriguing.
I doubt it would work for a PR Lackey like me.
Thank you and good night.
@ Roger, and simultaneously a PS to my comment to Rob: I like the idea of three sentences, but it will be hard to do. What can I say, I like the sound of my own voice.
Rob,
I totally get where you are coming from and I would not want to spend my life “burping data”, which is now one of my all time favorite phrases.
I have actually found that the limitation has improved my writing, making my conversations more “artful” than what I was churning out before. Each word and sentence is now weighed and examined, which causes the end result to be significantly more meaningful than a clump of scattered thoughts and ellipses.
I do agree that this is not a rule for all conversations. However, I do believe that we have let email become our swiss army knife of communication without ever questioning how to best use the tool and if, in some cases, it is even the right tool for many of our interactions.
Charlie,
Is that last paragraph what you were looking for?
When I think about this subject I always come back to Ze Frank’s talk about compression: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/08/082806.html
“We seem to be getting comfortable consuming lower quality information. Some people think that, because of this, everything is turning to sh*# and we’re being robbed of rich experiences.
But I think of it like a dirty pane of glass: If you know the glass is dirty, you can look through it and the dirt just disappears. Knowing that it’s dirty allows you to differentiate between the noise and the thing you’re looking at.
If people were consuming information without knowing there was noise, there would be a problem. Looking through a dirty pane of glass, you would assume that there was a big streaks on your friend’s nose, and I would assume that I had fibromyalgabracitis and cancer.
But the remarkable thing is that, because many of us are participating in the creation of informaiton, we understand the amount of noise that comes with it. The very knowledge that details are missing allows us to consume lower quality information. If a particular detail that’s important to us is missing, we know there’s a way to find it.
Many publishers make money off of taking time to provide high quality information with little noise. But nowadays, we want our information quickly and that comes with noise. We’re willing to sacrifice the trees for the forest because we know that’s what we’re doing.
It’s not worse or better, it’s, what would you rather live in: a room with a single small squeaky clean window, or an entire room that was made out of glass… that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks?”
@Charlie-
-but I did say I was thinking about it, Charlie. My motto—progress and not perfection!I LOVE the idea about 3 line emails… I’ll have to give that a try – as a way to “cut to the chase” in my communications, if nothing else!
And ditto on no home phone – it really does simplify (and no sales calls during dinner is nice!)
My background is working for lawyers. As an occupational group, lawyers tend to be champions at using run-on sentences.
I’m having to break some bad habits when communicating with non-lawyer folks!
To quote our local “Drinking & Driving” TV spots: “Know your limit. Stay within it.”
A credit union Choosing to write in haiku That’s what we should do.