Information Diet, Week 9

A while back, I wrote about how I was going to use Evernote to collect all my social media feeds, so I wouldn’t be tempted to check them constantly.

So here I am, about 2 months into my “experiment.” Has it worked so far? Well, yes and no.

In one sense, I’ve narrowed down my information input. I’ve unfollowed blogs and unfollowed people on facebook and Twitter, just to pare down the stream of junk coming into my “Pending” notebook. So in that sense, it’s been an improvement. On the other hand, I’m still easily distracted. I still find myself compulsively checking Twitter every now and then. It is getting better, though.

Some of my tools to channel my feeds into Evernote threw me a monkey wrench this week. Feedly suddenly (with no announcement) changed the ability to export feeds to a paid for feature. Which is fine, I guess, except I don’t like it when apps suddenly make features unavailable to non-paying users, or even worse, nullify a paid-for feature and ask you to buy it again. (There’s a few apps that are on my blacklist for this reason… Tapatalk is one, Endomondo is another.)

So that means instead of importing a couple of RSS feeds into Evernote, I’d have to set up a feed for every single blog I want to follow. Okay- fair game. I just narrowed down the list to a few I actually care about. That’s a win, right?

I took a break from using StayFocusd, because I was always stressing about how much time I had left to use a particular site. I never hit the limit, but it was the constant nagging in my mind that was driving me nuts. I may go back to it later. Just needed a break.

I think overall, the program is working. I’m still not 100% used to it, and when I’m bored I still scroll through Twitter and such for interesting things to fill my brain. But overall, it’s improved my focus noticeably.