I’ve been trying to keep entries shorter these days, because who has time to read? According to a Forrester Research survey, a quarter of us on line are “creators”–we write, post videos and music–leaving less time for others’ ruminations. Making it worse is the sheer volume of information. Facebook may be the water cooler in the sky, but email, blogs, and Twitter are part of a river that flows past us each day.
Digital life has become a constant offering of links. Read this, because someone you admire suggests it. Read this, because the information will help you [fill in the blank]. Read this, because it’s outrageous. Read this for a good laugh. Read this, because it will bring a tear to your eye and rest0re your belief in humanity. I only recently have begun to give myself permission to not have to read it all. Enticing, fascinating, and compelling though it all may be, my day simply isn’t long enough or my brain wide enough.
The best we can do is think of ourself as gold miners–sifting through the stream, plucking out nuggets that seem to glitter, and then storing them to examine later. It’s so time consuming, that we either give up altogether or rely on others to do the panning for us. For example, I trust Mashable.com to keep me up to date on social media. Which brings me back to my point of this (somewhat shorter) entry: I will continue to try to be concise. Except when I can’t. Thanks for understanding.
