Re-Focusing: RSS and Social Media Feed Trimming (Part 1)

[zetasyanthis]

I've been trying to trim down my distractions lately so I can do the things I really want to instead of getting bogged down in the things my nervous ticks focus on.  As such, I'm going to try and put out a few short notes on this periodically to track how I'm doing.

This has come in a few phases, so I'm going to detail my attempts and failures according to them.

Phase 1 - Disabling Noise

Step one is to start stripping this crap out.  Let's detail it and then talk about how I've done!

• Phone-centric noise
  
  • RSS news feeds
  • News applications (BBC, NPR)
  • News sites (Reddit, Anandtech, Ars Technica, BBC, NPR)
  • Podcasts
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
• Home (laptop-centric) noise (and content)
  
  • RSS news feeds
  • Twitter
  • Youtube

To reduce noise at home, I've stripped down about 70% of the content in my RSS feeds, ~50% of the content I follow on Reddit, and about 10% of the Youtube channels/content.  I've gone from maybe 70 articles/webcomics/stories per day via those feeds to about 10 per day.  I've also made the conscious decision to leave my reddit account active, but not add it to my RSS feeds anymore.  That means that I can go check the stuff I'm interested in in a summarized fashion if I want, but don't see it as a matter of course.

How have I done sticking to this plan?  Eh, kinda well, kinda poorly?  Youtube is still deactivated for the most part, and my RSS feed reader has stayed off the phone.  (I now force myself to only check them at home, once a day if I can manage, but I have occasionally visited the site manually.  Just added those to my ad-blocker though, to stop myself from going there!)  Podcast Addict stayed away for two weeks or so, but it's back now, with seriously reduced volume.  (I'd kept a few podcasts since my OCD brain really really wants me to complete things I start even though I wasn't really that interested.)  I'm still heavily refreshing Twitter, but I'd say the time wasted on my phone during the day (until I get home at least) has gone down by about 80%.  I'm calling that a win.

So, let's see those bullet points again, this time with the adjustments!

• Phone-centric noise (reduced by 80%)
  • Podcasts (stripped out about 50% of the active ones)
  • Twitter (reduced by ~ 15%)
• Home (laptop-centric) noise
  
  • RSS news feeds (reduced by ~60%)
  • Twitter (reduced by ~ 15%)
  • Youtube (reduced by ~10%)

Phase 2 - Adding Things That Matter

• Journaling about my emotions and stuff really helps.  I've started a blog here.  Yay!  Progress!
• Writing poems and stories.  Some of this has worked, some hasn't.  I've been writing stuff, but not a ton yet, as much of my creativity seems to be focused at work due to the intensity of what's going on there.  I think this is on the up-tick, though!
• Reading stories and checking out awesome art!  This gets my creative juices flowing, and I've been doing a lot of it.  Some has hit emotionally really hard, so it's a bit overwhelming once in a while, but overall, major progress.
• Health / Exercise.  I need to start this.  I have a free gym at work that I walk by every day, and I ought to be using it!  Maybe this week?

That's all for this week's update.  I'm going to try and make this a regular thing, though!