monkey!

November 6, 2008

I became a headliner. In one sense of the word

Growing up I was always interested in discovering new things, researching what I already knew and just keeping my mind busy in general.

With the coming of things like syncdicated content on the web, where I can get an account and use Google Reader, to easily read content from across the web, my mind freakin’ exploded. I fell in love with this, and have been an avid reader for a few years now.

There is however, one problem. Over the course of this time, I began adding more and more feeds to my list. I didn’t want, I needed input. I craved it. I managed to rack up an impressive amount of feeds that I would read daily. I got my routine down. Once in the morning, once around lunch, and once in the evening

It worked well, but I began noticing a horrible trend.

I became a headline reader.

All this content coming in and half of what I was reading was just headlines. New species found in the Ocean? Cool, but I would not go past that. Bombs in Syria? Damn, that sucks. But what more do I know? Not much.

This became a problem. I began reading all this, not really taking it in. I almost felt like a drone at times. Pressing J for the next story, J, J, J. Ok phew, done. Can go back to other things now.

Once I realized what was happening I changed my ways. I removed some feeds that contained mostly noise, and kept the good ones. Then, I added some new ones that looked very interesting and I once again began reading. Really, actually reading. Line for line, word by word. No more headlines.

Now, I am still doing the same. I’m actually reading, and it feels good. Basically, what advice I can give is try not to feed yourself all the information possible. You can’t be great and knowledgeable about everything, but you sure can be awesome at a handful of things. The same applies in this scenario. Take the time to truly read the stories, comment on them, engage yourself and you will find that you are getting back a lot more then if you’re just scrolling through the headlines.