Eliminating noise

Back in July, I wrote about my discontent in regards to how much time I was spending on social media sites (approximately 15 hours / month, according to RescueTime). Just a little over three months later, through sheer will and brutal (self) finger slapping, I now only spend a little over four hours per month on what seems to me to be the greatest distraction since the invention of TV.

This little experiment has given me a great deal of time to work on more interesting stuff, spend more face to face time with friends and read more. It’s been great, but I have a new challenge.

It seems I spend about five hours each month reading blogs and (mostly technology-related) news. It’s not that bad if you think about it as it’s only fifteen minutes per day, so it’s not about the time. It’s about the noise; this morning, while zapping through my Google Reader feeds, I realised that I couldn’t care less about TechCrunch’s reports on the fact that Zingly, Munglu, Dunglu, Vingli just launched. I’m aware that I might sound like an arrogant prick for saying this, but I just don’t care.

So I’m taking on another experiment in November: delete all my news sources from Google Reader and only keep friends’ blogs, hoping that the great news will somehow make it’s way up. In order to keep up with the world, I’ll continue reading two of my favourite magazines: The New Yorker and The Economist. I’ll also be adding a trade magazine, NMA, and a technology source to the list. But as I can’t think of a technology source that’s brief, relevant and pertinent, I’m wondering if I could get some suggestions from you guys?

That being said, I’ll let you all know in January how things went.