m3gan

My wise friend Ed suggested that my recent spate of retracting social web obligations was more like "Web 1.9" than a simple case of going cold turkey. I think he's onto something - for me, Web 1.9 is everything I like about Web 2.0 but with a healthy dose of skepticism and self-discipline thrown in. My path to Web 1.9 was paved by attempts to focus on creative work and career decisions despite all of the noise I had become accustomed to, and it feels great now to be more self-aware about the tools that I choose to use. Here are some examples from my adventures in scaling back:

Same tool, new approach (LinkedIn, feed reader)

LinkedIn had me stumped for awhile. As I transitioned from Technology Manager to Wandering Daughter Job*, I saw LinkedIn as a useful tool for my professional graph but a real drag when it comes to chronological portfolio upkeep, so I included it in my experiment. (UPDATE: in hindsight I think this one was a bad idea -- I plan on re-building my LinkedIn network)

As for feed reading, I had a very lazy approach before. My feed reader (Liferea FWIW) was showing me about 20x more links than I could digest in any meaningful way. Reading all of those subject lines and excerpts per week gives you the ability to impress your friends with "Oh, I read about that, in TechCrunch right?", which is probably fine since they're in the same boat as you with information overload, but trust me, cutting down your feeds and creating useful filters based on your interests are going to make your brain very happy. My new rule of thumb is that if articles are coming through that don't fit my framework (i.e.., I wouldn't even want to read them if I had time), I either dump the publisher or create a new filter.

And finally, we have the Web 1.9 dream application Instapaper to send content (whether it's articles, long-winded emails..) to our favorite portable reading devices to be read at our convenience. Since one of the devices Instapaper supports is the Kindle, my most treasured toy, this one was just a pure gift.

Cold Turkey (Twitter, Facebook)

I liked Twitter when it was used only by nerds, and I knew everyone on my network. When it became popular and people were telling me about the celebrities they were following or where in Union Square they were standing, I felt overwhelmed and opted out.

Facebook was tough. I really like Facebook. I even used it to track down people in 6 countries a few years ago and to drive a "let's all meet in Paris" 10-year reunion. That's not a tool to scoff at. Unfortunately I wasn't successful in managing my usage, and I decided to throw in the towel. It was surprisingly easy to adapt to a Facebook-free universe, and I don't miss it.

And so on..

We can't function by absorbing ALL of the information provided by ALL of the tools and social networks, so it's a positive exercise to analyze their limitations and prioritize what you need. If you've made it this far in my post, my bet is that you already have a Web 1.9, and my advice is to acknowledge it and tune it, because it's allowing you to enjoy this era while keeping your capacity for bigger thoughts intact.

I'll end with a plug for yet another New York City-based software service (go NYC!) called the Action Method - which can help you manage all of those personal projects you're going to have time for now.