eliminating distractions

I have 140 blogs in my reader, 43 of these are in an “on hiatus” folder (this saddens me as most of them were brilliant) and there are 2 that I read for workly purposes.

I realise that I’ve added a good many of these as time-filler/wasters. There are a bunch that are not really adding much value and some that I was finding a teensy bit (okay, maybe a lot) aggravating – of course I’m not talking about your blog, dear reader.

I think this blog-reading is kind of like self-sabotage, because I’ll read these to avoid doing other things. It is probably more accurate to say I read them to avoid even thinking about what other things to do. I think the latter is the key thing here – I’m using all these distractions to avoid making plans to do things. I really struggle to come up with an Action Item list for the day (or hour). Just why this is, I’m not entirely sure!

So in the spirit of taking a good hard look at myself and my behaviours (and also decluttering!), I’ve been pretty ruthless and removed 20 of the active blogs. This is actually a situation where the Marie Kondo approach of asking yourself “does this spark joy?” really works well. That still leaves 77 blogs in the reader that are not on hiatus – yikes! I might have to have another crack at it.

I’ve also had a bit of a tidy of the links on the sidebar and have removed most of the dead ones and added a few more (maybe I should have added a “new” category?)

In a similar vein, I’m already in the process of weaning myself from the guardian and will stay away until I can convince myself I don’t need to read every single article every day. Likewise, I’m restricting myself to twitter and instagram twice a day and I’m funnelling all important email to a shiny new email address and checking my long-term gmail account only twice a day. I noticed this morning that I become totally distracted when I see shiny sale/bargain emails and I really don’t need anything new right now.

Then, I daresay I probably need some reflection (or therapy) to identify just what it is I am trying to avoid!

But Holy!Goodness! I need to go for a run to clear my head.

2 thoughts on “eliminating distractions

  1. do you use unroll.me? I found that very helpful for shiny bargain emails (I’m looking at you Boden) and only check what is in there when I need to make a purchase (that is, triggered by need rather than shiny emails)

    • I don’t, but I definitely need to get onto it! I try to send them to folders and have them automatically marked as read, but that sometimes fails to stop me.

      I am powerless in the face of boden emails (your fault entirely!)

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