Reclaiming time and pace
One approach I use to manage the incoming flood of information is to use a dedicated email account for newsletters and similar subscriptions. That way, I can focus on my “main” emails without distractions, while intentionally sitting back and reading interesting content later.
One benefit is that this email address is easy to ignore. If, say, I’m laid up in a hospital for a week, newsletters will continue to accumulate with no adverse effects. When I return to the account, I can choose what to do next. The typical approach is to declare email bankruptcy, delete the accumulation, and start over as new issues arrive. It worked well.
The newsletters I subscribe to generally fall into the following categories:
- Paid news subscriptions. Things like the local paper, or national or other news organizations that I not only want to read, but also support.
- Good news sources for Not All News is Bad. It’s nice to have a semi-steady stream of newsletters focused on positivity showing up in my inbox each day. I’ll often pick the day’s Not All News Is Bad entry from what I encounter here.
- Thinking, philosophy, self-help, and more. This is harder to categorize. It’s grown from the items I subscribe to to generate 7 Takeaways — though that’s kinda backwards. I subscribe to them to encourage myself to read better stuff, and 7 Takeaways is the result.
- Miscellaneous, usually humor of some sort.
After the initial event, and not only ignoring the newsletter account, but also running around to my sites and slapping “On Hiatus” everywhere, I elected to sit back and think about what the next few weeks might hold. Forced Downtime discusses where I landed: it’s time to take a break and restore. In fact, even if my recovery were miraculously 100% complete tomorrow, stepping back for a while makes sense just to catch my breath, re-prioritize, and perhaps re-jigger my ongoing efforts.
But I’m still getting a lot of email. A LOT. And I’m not paying attention to a lot of it; most of it, even.
The Unsubbening
I have been unsubscribing from newsletters and other email sources like a madman.
Now, this presents a dilemma: I subscribed for a reason. These are generally good publications that I truly value. I just need to set most aside for a while. And yet … unsubscribe guilt? FOMO? Something else? I don’t know.
Thus, “I love you, but…” followed by Unsubscribe.
Paid subscriptions continue for the most part; I just put the actual email portion of that relationship aside. Everything else goes on a kind of back-burner list to revisit when I elect to re-engage more fully.
It’s been wonderful. My normally newsletter-filled email account sits quietly, not overwhelming me with things I know I won’t get to for some time.
But it’s not empty. There are a few items I’ve prioritized to continue to receive and pay attention to during my downtime.
News
- 1440 — This turns out to be the only true news item that I keep receiving. “The most impactful stories of the day, expertly curated and explained.” They do a good job of selection, explanation, and even light entertainment without being overwhelming.
Thought
- Too Old For This Sh*t, Julia Hubbel. — “Late in life adventure traveler and athlete. Prying as many folks over forty off the couch and into Nature as humanly possible. Prize-winning writer and journalist. World traveler. AI-free; free of artificiality and BS. Let’s play.” More to my point, she regularly discusses issues related to healthy aging, running a gamut from physicality, social norms, personal experiences, and more. While her topics aren’t always 100% on target for me, the breadth and insight more than make up for it. Not one I want to miss.
- Joan Westenberg — “I publish a weekly column on technology, culture, philosophy and what it means to be a human being. My goal: to think in public.” Emphasis on the “think”. A wide range of topics that not only reflect her own thinking but truly inspire others to examine their own. Always insightful.
- More to That, Lawrence Yeo. — “My goal is to take everything I’ve learned about the human condition, and condense it into a format that is clear, digestible, and memorable.” Another thinker, which is a high priority for me. Always interesting essays.
- Mike Monteiro’s Good News — “Every week I answer one of your questions. The question can be about anything you want, but I’ll only answer it if I think I can give a good answer.” The format is a schtick – Mike writes about what he wants (or needs) to write about. His thoughts are deep, often curmudgeonly, and worth the time. This was on the bubble for me, but the day I was writing this, he published an incredibly insightful and heartfelt piece that I decided I didn’t want to miss any upcoming issues.
- How to Build a Life, Arthur C. Brooks — Weekly column from The Atlantic, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
Entertainment
- The Oatmeal
- GoComics
- Open Windows- Ann Telnaes (OK, political, but spot on.)
Technical difficulty
- Every.to — This is the only true “tech” newsletter left, and it’s here mostly because it doesn’t have a way that I can see to unsubscribe from particular topic areas. It’s all or nothing, and while all is a lot, “nothing” isn’t what I want either. It’s been skewing a lot to AI and AI-related tools of late, with good insights.
RSS
If you’re not familiar with RSS, just know that it’s the backbone technology behind delivering podcasts and can provide newsletters and other content, bypassing email completely. You fire up an RSS reader — I use Feedly — subscribe to websites that offer RSS feeds (many do), and then scroll through the accumulated posts, reading what you want, ignoring the rest.
I decided to see if I could take this opportunity to use Feedly to read some of the subscriptions I care about rather than via email. There are pros and cons, of course, so it’s all one big experiment. I’ve used RSS for years, so I’ve got a collection to start with, but as I re-engage, I’ll be seeing if some of those newsletter unsubscribes would work as well in Feedly.