Over the last few years, I've been reading a lot of blogs. So far so, that it has become my main source of information for most things.
Recently I've come to realise that I'm reading in a disconnected state. No, I'm not talking about my connection to the net at the time of reading.
I'm talking about me reading, but not really taking in what I'm reading. It's almost as if I'm just doing it out of habbit, and not because I really value the information.
Over the weekend, I've gone through the feeds which I've subscribed to, and I've removed the ones that I haven't looked at in the last month, clearly I don't value those that much.
I've also undertaken to spend a bit of time sorting through the chaff before reading any post. If the post has not relevance to me after looking at the first paragraph, I'm skipping over it immediately, not just reading it for the sake if reading it.
If I decide to then read a post, I will make sure I grok what the writer is trying to convey. If I don't grok it at first, and it is a topic I'm interested in, I will then go and do the necessary research to make sure that I do grok it. Sometimes, a specific topic will take too long to research and grok in one sitting, or, I may need to learn a few other topics as building blocks first. In this case I will identify the extra things I need to learn before coming back to the topic, and then add those topic to my list of things to learns. I keep a seperate To-Do list of things that I want/need to learn, and will try and tick at least one thing off in a week.
I've undertaken to do this only for the quality posts out there, otherwise I will be spending all my time reading, and very little of it actually producing something useful.
The same goes for any article that I read from any other source. It is pointless to read things just for the sake of looking at the information.
Our lives are now revolving around receiving information. If you're not making sure that you're receiving only relevant information, and only at the right time, then you're wasting time that you could be spending producing something useful.