Jan 1, 2010
Simplifying my reading and research
As apart of my setting goals for 2010 I set 5 words – one of which was Simple.
Simple Ideas. Simple Concepts. Simple Processes and Simplify.
Tonight I decided to Simplify my web reading. In 2009, I read too much business news, business trends, social media trends which often was great for small talk but often lead to information overload that really in the end didn’t help move my ideas move forward. I had created too much noise. Most of what I read is via my Google Reader which I open every morning and spend about an hour scanning the information and another hour at night. I use this as a good way to research and gain ideas for my business and sites.
Over the last couple of years I have added newspapers, magazines, blogs, zines and other RSS feeds. However, I realised that I needed to simplify the amount and type of information I was reading. So, I went through each category – business, landscape, architecture, entrepreneur, news, etc and culled each to 2 to 5 sources from 10-20.
How did I do it? Well, I gauged how much I really gained from each source and how useful it was to me last year. Also if I thought that I could get the same content from another one of my sources I culled it. I also found during 2009 that I often got duplicate information from multiple sources especially US-based newpapers on China or Asia. I also culled a lot of the USA based magazines as some of what I read was useful, but I decided I need to focus more on Asia were I am based.
To concentrate more on Asia and other topics I searched Alltop.com for RSS feeds and added 2 sources maximum to some categories.
I am also Simplifying my social media habits – less twitter/foursquare and more writing ideas down and then thinking of ways of implementing(doing) them.
I also decided recently that I needed to reduce the number of my sites from 5 to 3 and probably soon to be 2 (not including my blog!) so that I can spend more time on my design studio SUSTAIN.DS and World Landscape Architect.
I hope this gives you something to think about and what you will do in 2010. What are you doing in 2010 to simplify your life?
Leave it in the comments section or email me
