And what is here applied to crafty blogs can be applied to other things. Reading food blogs without ever cooking more. Reading health food blogs without eating healthier. Reading productivity books without implementing them. I think you get the idea.”
–Things Bright blog by Elizabeth Rogers Drouillard
I have been struggling with blog reading for awhile, more than a year or so. I have a desire to read many blogs and I’m subscribed to many. I’m curious about different perspectives and skill sets, but my Reader has paralyzed me. How can I possibly have the time to read everything? Well, you know the answer to that already.
I happened upon the blog post above through Miss Diane’s blog, Crafty Pod, and am so glad I did. The post Elizabeth wrote is full of common sense and should have been obvious to my logical self. Read less blogs. Duh. It will release the paralysis and get me back to why I want to read blogs in the first place: to engage and be engaged.
I think I needed permission to do (read) less. I rarely give myself the option to do less. More always seems better in my mind, more productivity, more knowledge, more. But in the practical, and in the long run, less is more.
![om [one moment] meet up](http://i748.photobucket.com/albums/xx125/alamodestuff/OM_alamodemeetupbutton.jpg)
OM is *one moment* and is a meetup designed to notice & relish a moment in everyday life. The meetup idea was created by Linda at her blog, a la mode stuff.If you’d like to participate in OM, just click the button and you’ll be taken to Linda’s post explaining it all.
Amen sister! I’ve categorized blogs in my reader and only keep up to date with a couple of those categories. The others I may scroll through from time to time, but over time I’m getting less and less stressed about actually reading all the content. I’ve become immune to that big “over 1000 unread posts” message, and only take a look at the counts in the sub categories I wanna keep up to date with.
I just wish that flipbook would totally coordinate with my read count in my categories, because I love the interface, but don’t want to feel like “I’ve already read that one, flip on”.
I seem to be flinging online chores (like blogging every day, and twitter/facebooking) left and right as my responsibilities increase, and dude, that’s gotta be okay! 🙂
Sometimes it’s the simplest lessons that we have to learn, over and over and over again!
less IS more. here’s my blog reading hierarchy:
1. If you gave birth to me
2. If we have the same mom
3. If you are someone I have a personal relationship with
4. If you’re posts are more eye candy than words (Pikaland is my favorite visual treat
Everyone else may or may not get deleted… It works well for me 🙂