I’m looking forward to a busy 2010, but one filled with a lot more value and a lot less stuff. Spending New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day reading nothing but minimalism blogs and chatting about Zen did a lot to really create my impression of what 2010 will be. I get the impression at least some people are as well while they go through their technology stack as it stands and consider what needs to be changed.
Guys like Michael Arrington -> Jason Calacanis -> David Crow, they are all doing technology usage audits, seeing what they use and what they want to use more of. I never knew how much of a popular thing it was to do. The truth is though that technology changes (duh), and we do as well. Sometimes the two are in alignment but most often times not so much. If you know anything about social media you’ve been conditioned to sign up to new services as they come, to try out new apps to see if they’ll be useful for you etc… The problem is the times where your tools support your short and long term goals are quite rare, but that doesn’t stop us from keeping all these apps with us, checking up on all these websites everyday, and distracting ourselves.
The evidence of change on a personal level is easy to spot. I used to visit Digg several times a day, Facebook more often, and even Reddit sometimes, but now I try to think back to the last time I discovered something valuable from these sites (either useful information or a meaningful social interaction) and I can’t come up with anything. Now that’s not a problem besides the fact I still waste 10s of minutes each day popping into Facebook then right back out. Over the course of a year this takes up a lot of time and overall adds a lot of distraction to my day. Time to delete Facebook? It’s an easy problem in reality, but probably just more of a big social hurdle that needs to be overcome.
The one thing that I unsurprisingly keep getting the best value out of?
Blogs.
No matter what seems to happen as far as usage trends and the state of the blogosphere, blogs still gives me the best value. As a sign of the times I find more great blogs from Twitter than anywhere else now, and as a result my time and my attention shift.
It’s sort of like if you’re walking down a trail in the park and there are all these other paths that break off from the main one. As you find new paths you get curious and start exploring paths you haven’t taken before. Some paths lead you to new and interesting areas of the park you haven’t discovered before, while other paths lead you in circles, putting you back the path you were just on. After a while you know which paths lead you to where you want to go, and which ones waste your time, so you stop taking them.
Do you think you do a good job of focusing your attention on the places and people that offer value and that contribute to your goals? Or do you still struggle with distraction?
Bonus: For great minimalist reading check out the new mnmlist blog by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.
Photo Credit: Metrix X
