The Myth of "Keeping Up"

This post about information overload from Creating Passionate Users (via LifeHacker) is so true. It describes me well.

... 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..."

I am addicted to information, and it is killing me. I throw out far more than I read. I subscribe to tons of stuff just because I don't want to miss anything. Throwing it away doesn't bother me nearly as much as it used to. It's often a relief. What hurts now is deciding what to keep when I attack "the pile."

Not counting the Bible, which is obvious, here's my must-keep list so far:

• The Week -- is simply the best, unbiased news magazine I've found. It is in digest form with one page on everything. I read it cover to cover each week. A couple weeks ago they ran a one page summary about the DaVinci Code controversy, and it told me everything I really need to know. Now I can avoid all of the DaVinci hype and clutter.
  
• Wired -- I skip about every other issue because of time constraints, but Wired is an excellent way to stay up on technology from many different perspectives. Some of the pieces are pretty far out there, but Wired still makes the grade.  (Al Gore is on the cover of the current issue. I almost vomited. Good one to skip.)
  
• The Wall Street Journal -- No explanation required. It's one of the few remaining purveyors of original content left in this country. It's expensive and worth every penny.
  
• Consumer Reports -- My dad buys me a gift subscription for Christmas every year. Yeah, I know it's put out by a bunch of activists, but it really is a useful guide. CR is too practical to pass up.
  
• The Akron Beacon Journal -- Sadly, the paper is a shell of it's former self, but it's my source for local news, sports, etc. Terry Pluto and Chip Bok are worth it.
  

The guys at Manager Tools recommend Fortune as the best of the major business magazines in terms of management-related content. I recently re-subscribed, and I'm going to see if it makes my must-read list too. My past  impression was that it seemed more focused on investing than anything else.

I should probably let the rest of my subscriptions go... <whimper>... baby steps, baby steps.

A few weeks ago I spent about an hour cleaning up the feeds in my Bloglines account. I subscribe to 180 feeds, but I only read about six regularly. I put these six in a folder called "Daily Reads," and I filed the rest in other folders. They are there if I need them, but now I don't have to stare at them anymore and worry about catching up. The nice thing about RSS is that it never stacks up in your living room!