Kathy Sierra on The myth of "keeping up"
The inimitable Kathy Sierra has some great advice about keeping up: don't even try.
[from Creating Passionate Users: The myth of "keeping up"]So... it's time to let that go. You're not keeping up. I'm not keeping up. And neither is anyone else. At least not in everything. Sure, you'll find the guy who is absolutely cutting-edge up to date on some technology, software upgrade, language beta, whatever. But when you start feeling inferior about it, just think to yourself, "Yeah, but I bet he thinks Weezer is still a cool new band..."
Besides letting go, what else can we do to combat Information Anxiety? I have just a few tips, but I'm hoping you'll add more:
Find the best aggregators
Aggregators become increasingly more important. Finding the right person, business, web site, etc. who does the best job of filtering (attenuating) in a specific area adds time to your life.
Get summaries
Publisher Joe Wikert recently blogged quite positively about a service called getAbstract, that offers online book summaries. Initially skeptical, Joe found getAbstract to be a tremendous time saver. (I haven't checked it out, but I tend to trust Joe's advice)
Cut the redundancy!
Do you really need three news magazines? Do you have to subscribe to every technical journal? Get with your friends or colleagues and divide up the main ones. Each person is responsible for subscribing to and keeping up with just one, letting the others know IF there's something in a particular issue worth a read.
Unsubscribe to as many things as possible
Like the previous point, you probably have way too much redunancy in both your printed and online subscriptions. Again, if you're using the right aggregators, they'll tell you when something is worth it. For print, you can save some trees if you give up more of your physical newspapers and magazines.
Recognize that gossip and celebrity entertainment are black holes
It's like watching a car accident despite our best intentions... we just can't help look, so the more you can stay away from the publications that document every personal detail of every music and film star the better. Let that be your guilty pleasure for when you're at the dentist's office...
Pick the categories you want for a balanced perspective, and include some from OUTSIDE your main field of interest
Better to have one design magazine (architecture, product design, graphic design, etc.) (regardless of whether you're a designer or not), one news magazine, one arts magazine (music, photography, etc.), and one technology/lifestyle magazine (Wired, Make, etc.) than to get rid of everything but your three software development journals. Keeping up with a different field is sometimes just as useful (if not more) than keeping up with your current one.
Be a LOT more realistic about what you're likely to get to, and throw the rest out.
Don't file it. Don't store it. What you don't have piling up you can't feel guilty about. Some people put little height limits on their "to read" stack. (OK, when it gets as high as that drawer, I must throw out the oldest 50%...)
In any thing you need to learn, find a person who can tell you what is:
* Need to know
* Should know
* Nice to know
* Edge case, only if it applies to you specifically
* Useless
Yes, throw away everything that is not important, read nothing that doesn't matter, and spend no time with useless people.
Sounds kind of like capital punishment for stuff in your life that commits the crime of having been accumulated.
Too many times I open the useless magazine and read something that relates three hyperlinks back in my life--ESSENTIAL stuff, that, even if messy, reminds me, changes me. I'm not willing to sacrifice the innocent for a nicer looking pile.
I don't want a balanced perspective, I want to go deep, deeper still, dig in, roll in it until I smell like it. Sometimes I want to become a subject--sometimes that's the only way I can get it. Redundancy gives me more things to touch.
Celebrity gossip keeps me honest. If Britney can drop her newborn on his head a couple of times and get pregnant three months after dropping kid number one, there's a lesson in that somewhere for me. Some of the best writing is done by the sharp tounged gossip bloggers. And we are here, I think, to write.
Aggregators are a good compliment. Rely on them too much, you lose your way in the community. It's like watching the weather channel instead of going outside.
Sorry--I'm keeping my ransacked workstyle until at least Web 4.0.
Posted by: jeneane | June 09, 2006 at 09:48 PM