Edit Your Life, Part 7: Drop an RSS Feed Like a Bad Habit

 I recently read an article about a blogger who reads more than 600 feeds a day. I thought I was bad, with nearly 100 feeds in my Google Reader. The truth is, either number is overload, as there is no way that you need to read that many feeds, or that going through so much information every day can bring you happiness.

So I made a conscious decision, within the last week, to brutally edit my RSS feeds — and now I’m down to 16.

It was a heart-wrenching process, I will admit. You get addicted to these feeds, and over time, you add one or three every day and they grow like a mountain of refuse. It gets to the point where going through all your feeds is a chore, and you can never keep up with all of them.

So I set out to eliminate all of those that weren’t bringing extremely useful or entertaining information into my Google Reader just about every day. The first day of editing, I cut down nearly 100 feeds to a little over 60. I took a deep breath, and told myself that was good enough for the day.

The next day, I cut it down to 44. That was good enough too, and I told myself that I didn’t have to do it all at once. The third day, I made it down to 28. On the fourth day, I was down to 16, and seeing my list of feeds whittled down to the essential ones was a liberating feeling. I decided to stop, and stay with those. I think I can cut them down to 10, but really, that’s an arbitrary number and I don’t think it will make that huge a difference. Of the remaining 16 feeds, there are maybe 1 or 2 that I could cut out if forced to, but I really enjoy all of them, so I think I’ll stick with where I’m at.

The result? Well, the time I spend reading my feeds has been cut down drastically. It used to take me an hour, all told (I would break that down to two sessions a day). Now I can do it in 15 minutes or less. It also saves me a lot of stress and a lot of filtering through stuff I never read anyway.

It’s probably useful to know how I read feeds before I get into the process of eliminating them. I’ve mentioned this before, but the way I go through my Google Reader is by using the keyboard to crank through my entire list of unread posts. I skim through the headline and content quickly, and if there’s something that interests me, I’ll hit a key and pop it open in a new tab. Once I’ve gone through my entire list, I’ll go to the opened tabs and read just the best articles in their entirety. If I don’t have time to read them all now, I’ll bookmark them for later.

So let’s look at the process for eliminating all but the essential feeds in y our life:

1. Initial sweep. The first time you go through your list, if you’re like me, you can probably eliminate 10-15 right off the bat, just by looking at the name of the feed. You know which ones really shouldn’t be there. Unsubscribe to those immediately.


2. Inactive. Next, use the “Trends” feature in Google Reader (or similar feature in other readers) to find your inactive feeds (it’s the tab right next to “Frequently Updated”). If they haven’t updated in the last week or so, you can probably safely drop them. If you’re like me, you can probably drop another 10-15 feeds. You’re done for today!


3. Drill down. Here’s the next stage — discovering which feeds don’t give you much value on a daily basis. If there are feeds on the borderline, I would drill down into them for a couple of weeks to see if I actually read any of their posts. If you imagine your daily reading process as a horizontal scan — you’re scanning through all the day’s posts from all your feeds — then going into a single feed’s posts for two weeks or so is a vertical scan. Do a vertical scan of the borderline feeds, and see how many of their posts you have actually been interested in. If there hasn’t been a single one in the last two weeks, drop it. You can probably cut your current list in half through this step. Rest for today.


4. Worst-case scenario. If there are a number of feeds that you are hesitant to get rid of, not because they give you value, but because you’re worried that you’ll miss something important, ask yourself, “What’s the worst case scenario if I drop this feed?” In most cases, it’s not that bad. And if there’s something really important that’s written about, in most cases one of your other feeds will mention it. Drop those “what if” feeds if your life wouldn’t be miserable without them.


5. Test folder. You should be getting down to a much smaller number by this stage. You’re probably down to two groups — the really must-haves and the ones you still think you might need but that aren’t giving you value. If so, create a folder for this second group, and put them all in there for a week. Don’t read them. If nothing bad happens to you in that week because you didn’t read them, you’re OK. To give it a test, read through the test folder at the end of the week, and see if that little reading session gave you value. If not, drop those feeds.


6. Friends. If you’re like me, the hardest ones to drop were those of some of my blogger friends. I really enjoy interacting with them, and they write interesting stuff, but for my purposes, reading them was absolutely essential. Still, it’s hard to unsubscribe from a friend’s blog. Then I realized: my friends usually email me with their best posts anyway. I end up learning about the post twice — once in my reader, and once in their email. So I dropped my friends’ feeds (well, most of them). I hope they don’t hate me for this, but I really needed to edit my feeds list, and I did what I had to do. I still love my friends and will drop whatever I’m doing for them.


7. The final test. Once you’ve gotten your feeds list down to what you feel is minimal, go through each feed on your list once more, and ask yourself, “Is this feed absolutely essential? Does it give me value every day? Why do I need it?” If the answers to those questions is satisfactory, keep them. You may be able to get rid of a few more in this final test.


8. Minimize reading. Now that you are down to the essential feeds, it should be highly satisfying to look at your feed reader. I know that it’s disproportionately pleasing for me to look at my small list. It shouldn’t take you long to go read through your feeds every day. Be sure to limit yourself now to one session per day, getting it done quickly and all at once. Don’t keep checking your feeds throughout the day, as it is a distraction from what really needs to get done.

Edit Your Life, Part 6: A Media Fast

 One of the things I have learned is to edit brutally (no sarcastic comments about why I don’t do that with my blog posts). Cut out everything that’s not necessary, and you’ve got a more meaningful story.

I highly recommend editing your life.

Today’s edit: A Media Fast.

This is going to be a controversial post, undoubtedly, as it will ask you to consider giving up some of the things you’re addicted to most: television, DVDs, movies, news, magazines, newspapers, and … gasp! … the Internet. Don’t tune out yet, though: this is not a permanent thing, but call it an experiment instead.

Take a minute to think about how much information you process every day. If you’re like me and a lot of other people, you get a lot of your news on the Internet, and you also read a lot of blogs. You might also read books and magazines and newspapers. You probably also watch a lot of TV, where you get entertainment and news. You might watch a lot of DVDs, and listen to the radio on the way to work. At work, you might get memos and emails and a billion other pieces of information coming at you. You might be a part of an online forum, or social site, or newsgroup, or mailing list (or several!).

It’s information overload.

Our brains are not made to process this much information. We can do it, but it gives us a lot of stress, and we cannot think about any of the information long enough for it to give us real value. We are in the middle of a vast river of information, and it just flows by us constantly.

And then there’s all the time we spend on all this media.

Take a minute to think about how much time you spend online (typically a few hours), watching TV or DVDs (typically a few more hours), and reading all the other stuff mentioned above (another hour or two). Now think about how many goals you could accomplish if you cut those activities out of your life. The time you would gain would be tremendous.

So what do you do about it? Sometimes it’s good to get drastic. Try a media fast. But is it even possible? Yes, it is

Edit Your Life, Part 5: Your Wardrobe

One of the things I have learned is to edit brutally (no sarcastic comments about why I don’t do that with my blog posts). Cut out everything that’s not necessary, and you’ve got a more meaningful story.

I highly recommend editing your life.

Today’s edit: Edit your wardrobe.

Take a look at your closet — is it stuffed full of clothes you don’t wear? Do you have trouble picking out what to wear in the morning? Are there clothes you don’t fit, don’t like, or can’t wear because they are stained or torn? How about your clothes drawers? Overstuffed?

If so, your wardrobe may be in need of editing. Let’s be honest: most of us are in this category. And even though I’ve greatly simplified my clothing needs, every six months or so, I need to go through my closet to see if there’s stuff in here I no longer wear. I pull out a bunch of things and put them in a bag for donation. My closet is simpler, and my mind is more at ease.

To edit your wardrobe, here are some simple steps:

• Pull out all the clothes from your closet. Put them on your bed. Now go through this pile, one item at a time, deciding what stays and what goes. Follow these rules:
  
  
  
  1. If you haven’t worn an item in months, put it in the donate pile. There’s a reason you don’t wear that item — you’re probably not going to wear it again for a long while, if ever.
  
  
  2. If you no longer fit an item, donate it. Yes, you plan to lose 10 pounds to fit into that outfit. Well, when you do, go to the thrift shop and get some better-fitting items. Until then, they’re taking up space in your closet.
  
  
  3. If an item is stained or torn beyond repair, donate it. If you can repair it, put it in a bag and take it to be sewn tomorrow (or do it yourself). If that bag sits in your house or car for more than a week, you’ll probably never do it, so donate it or toss it. For myself, I often keep stained or torn clothing, if I really love an item, but I only wear it around the house. I save the good clothes for company. :)
  
  
  4. If an item is out of style or doesn’t match anything else you own, consider donating it. OK, if you really love it and still wear it, go ahead and keep it. Butterfly bell-bottoms? You’re still cool.
  
  
  5. When in doubt, put it in a storage container, label it with today’s date, and put it out of sight for a few months. If you ever really want to wear it, it’s still there. But if you open it in a few months, and you never needed it, donate it.
  
  
  6. For seasonal clothes, such as winter or summer clothing, put it in a container and label it. When the season comes, break out that container. No use keeping it in your closet the whole year round. Where I live, there’s always tropical goodness year round, so this isn’t an issue.


• If you still have a lot of clothes left, consider the following:
  
  
  
  1. Keep clothes that are of the same color scheme, and toss the rest. This way, everything matches, and you don’t have to worry about what goes with your chartreuse blouse. Neutral colors like tan and white are great, with some color tossed in. I avoid bright colors, especially those that bleed in the wash. I don’t like to worry about that.
  
  
  2. Keep clothes that are simple in design, and can be paired with anything. Jeans are a great example (not the kinds with bells and whistles, the simple kinds). You can put just about any shirt with jeans, and you’re good to go. Shoot for this kind of philosophy. Don’t have pants or a skirt that can only go with one or two other items. Be able to mix and match with ease and without some kind of complicated chart.
  
  
  3. Make comfort a priority. Looks are important, but comfort is more important. You want to be at ease in whatever you wear, so keep that in the forefront as you edit your clothing.


• Hang the clothes back in the closet nicely, in some order. Pairing by color is nice, and has an especially nice effect if you use the same color hangers. If you have fewer clothes, they look much nicer in the closet.


• Repeat this process with your clothes drawers. Throw out the torn underwear and stained socks. Once you weed out a lot of the stuff, fold them neatly and put them back in your drawers nicely. Again, fewer clothes look much nicer in your drawers.


• Edit your wardrobe every 6 months or so. It’s best if you refrain from buying too many more unnecessary clothes, but I know some of you are shopaholics, and even the rest of us accumulate stuff over time. Make this a regular event, and you’ll keep your wardrobe nice and simple.

Personally, I simplified my wardrobe years ago. In fact, new employers know that I dress very simply, usually wearing jeans or slacks with a T-shirt or polo shirt and sandals or Docs. I’m a simple guy, and if my employer doesn’t like it, they don’t have to hire me. I feel my talents are more than worth any casualness. And when I need to dress up, I do have some button-down shirts and ties for emergencies, but I’m not comfortable in them on a daily basis.

I still need to edit my wardrobe, though, on a regular basis. I know when it’s time when it’s hard to find stuff, and when I look through my closet and find lots of stuff I rarely wear.

Simplify your wardrobe, and your life will be much simpler and stress-free. It’s wonderful. Give it a try!