Cut back on blogs

I followed about 40 blogs until today. It does not take much to realize that causes me to loose a lot of time, especially on a larger period of time.

Be more productive tip #2: press the delete button on some of the blogs you’re following.

Evaluate if they provide information (as in useful information) to you and clearly delete the ones that aren’t. Also, low volume is not a reason to keep them: they will just draw your attention one way or another.

Cut back to less than 20. That seems reasonable, no?

Some I deleted:

  • Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen
    Although I like Scott’s writing style a lot, .NET is not my cup of tea anymore.
  • Ibuildings Blog
    They post to little useful information (for me, as a developer).
  • Small Business Trends
    This was a difficult one. While I really enjoyed reading their posts, it did not contain enough information for me.
  • Xaprb
    I just don’t use MySQL in a way Baron blogs about it and realized I probably never will.
  • Lifehacker
    You just need too much time to follow all of their posts! Very nice posts though.
  • Signal vs. Noise
    This was another difficult one. I love their style but like they say themselves: focus!
  • SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog
    Very painful. I also love their style but for various reasons this blog isn’t useful enough for me.
  • Redo The Web
    I will probably never use Symfony anyway.
  • Eric Bergen
    Just had to cut some more. Sorry Eric!
  • Chris Shiflett
    Sorry Chris!

Please note that this represents my opinion about these blogs and the effect on my work. They probably are appropriate to someone else.


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This entry was posted on October 15th, 2008 and is filed under Business, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.

 
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4 Responses to “Cut back on blogs”

  1. Gravatar of Ivo Ivo
    15. October 2008 at 18:50

    I read about 80 blogs a day without loss of productivity. How? Not read them manually, but read them through aggregators (planet-php, phpdeveloper.org) and in a feedreader (I use iGoogle). This way I can scan the headlines and automatically I’ll only read what’s relevant to me.

    This helps battling the signal to noise ration. E.g. you say the Ibuildings blog is too noisy for you; read phpdeveloper.org instead and you’ll automatically get only those ibuildings posts that are relevant to php developers.

  2. Gravatar of Sam Sam
    16. October 2008 at 11:00

    I like to read most of the posts completely: if if the headline isn’t imediately interesting, sometimes you discover interesting facts in the remainder of the post.

    However, I have no intention in judging any of the ones I unsubscribed from: I felt the need of trimming down and choices had to be made.

    I guess the difference can also be found in a persons activities: of course decision makers, architects, managers,… will benefit from different amounts and of course, subjects.

    I’ll still keep an eye on Ibuildings!

  3. Gravatar of Andy Andy
    18. October 2008 at 01:15

    How about posting the ones you still read?

    Weird to see Chris Shiflett’s blog being removed, always enjoyed his security findings. Too bad that he only posts about once a month or so.

  4. Gravatar of » Blogs I read – internet development – strictlyPHP » Blogs I read - internet development - strictlyPHP
    24. October 2008 at 16:31

    [...] Andy insisted, a list of feeds that I do enjoy reading (or feel the need to [...]

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