Karl wrote an excellent post about his desire for the aggregator of all the information one would want to keep track of. While his point is great and I encourage you to read it in its own context, there is one “big picture” view I wanted to offer to all of you that may be overwhelmed with the amount of “stuff” that is available out there that perhaps does not deserve your attention. That big picture view is:
Stop. You do this to yourself. You can stay as informed as you need to be just reading a single source and browsing through the headlines of a few of the people whose opinions you respect. If you feel overwhelmed, step back, then take a chainsaw to your e-life and clear out the clutter.
Why? Because you are human and as far as humans go there are only 24 hours in a day, most of it absorbed by sleep and wishing you didn’t have so much to do which eventually turns to boredom and pending paralyzing panic from perpetual “catch up” syndrome. Crowd your plate enough and your life will simply be reduced to continuous “catch up” with things and people, as you ignore other burning fires until they need to be “caught up” with….. completely destroying any priority, process and importance of people and tasks in your life.
Now that we got that brief bit of sunshine out of the way, let’s hear from Jimmy Joe Bob, the overwhelmed IT consultant:
“I can’t handle this anymore! I can’t keep up with the mailing lists, blogs, podcasts, video blogs, user group meetings, vendor webcasts, documentation, books, betas, advisories and now broken patches every month… I am going to stop patching and reading so I can spend more time on freeones.c… “ – JJB, Antispyware MSP Titanium Certified
I see it’s time for some motivational speaking. Bite your lip, this is going to hurt a little:
Shut the f*** up you worthless “barely qualified to answer helpdesk questions at AOL but posing as a technology/business consultant” sack of s***, you picked a career with a vertical learning curve and you’re making 6 figure salary despite being worth $35,000 tops on the market so thank your lucky stars for being able to be alive now and here and your only problem being the overwhelming amount of resources thrown at your feet for free. Grow some balls and take some pride in your profession.
Now that I’ve got your blood pumping, pick up that chainsaw and wack out the distractions from your daily life. I am always in search of things to free up my time, reduce distractions and unneccessary stress. I dropped all the Yahoo groups and haven’t missed a thing. I tuned out of the SMB community soap operas. I handed the SBS group to the new leaders. I dropped the projects I was working on that were not benefiting enough people in the intended ways. I consolidated my RSS feeds to “Important” and “Others”. I haven’t been to an IT conference in two months and I am still alive!
Point is, there are resources out there and they will eat up your life if you let them – so don’t. Find the leaders, find the people you respect and rely on them to lead you to what is truly relevant. Or lead yourself, but its harder to complain when the pain/problem is self-inflicted. As Karl says, relax FOCUS succeed.
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