First, it was the email newsletter. We all signed up like wild beavers damming up our inboxes.

Then blogs and the nefarious RSS (or Real Simple Syndication.)

“Those people” keep making it easier and easier for us to sign-up and subscribe.

Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.

That was me in 2006. Truth be told, it rocked. I had well over 1,000 feeds in my RSS Reader and I kept up-to-date with many of them. Going out and checking out so many blogs (and subscribing) let me throw myself right into the blog world. I watched, read, learned and participated. Super fun.

And then I got distracted. I watched the number of unread posts in my RSS Reader skyrocket. It started to get stressful and a tad overwhelming. I couldn’t keep up.

My attention was spread too thin. The result was less involvement in the most important communities, less digesting of important information, and less opportunity to find new stuff that really mattered to me.

Your attention is precious. Everyone wants a piece of it.

Including me.

It was time for me to reclaim my attention. Here’s what I’ve done:

1. Unsubscribed to 10 email newsletters. Most were on topics no longer relevant to me, so this was easy.
2. Deleted all of my RSS feed subscriptions. This was very tough to do, but it had to be done. Clean slate. I will be re-subscribing to feeds again, but doing so more selectively. I also hope to organize them better. But there’s more ways to read content and interact in the blogosphere than through subscribing to every feed out there.
3. Started actively using coComment to track discussions instead of subscribing to every blog I comment on.
4. Added TheGoodBlogs widget to my site. It’s proving to be an active, ever-changing blogroll, which I’m finding very useful.
5. Added MyBlogLog’s widget to my site. By seeing who’s visiting (and returning) it helps me get a better feel for my own blog community, and raises the profile and importance of their blogs to me. I’m also participating more in the MyBlogLog community.
6. Stopped looking at my own stats as much. Obsessing over your own stats is so easy, but all it does is drain attention from useful endeavors. And it also encourages you to mindlessly surf around without accomplishing much of anything.

I’m contemplating a set of guidelines for myself to determine what blogs are most valuable to me by my activity with those blogs. One idea was to unsubscribe if I haven’t taken any form of action after reading 10 posts on someone’s blog (or to subscribe if I have taken action.) Actions might include commenting, posting my own thoughts, digging, emailing the author, passing a link around, etc. That sort of rule forces me to really read people’s writing, think about it and participate in some way. Participation is really key. Reading passively is OK, but it’s through engaging bloggers that we succeed as individuals and a community.

You have to be engaged in what you’re doing, the content you’re consuming and the communities you play in. Otherwise there’s no point.

Your attention is yours to give. Choose wisely.

Although I just suggested that you wipe out your RSS Reader, if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing via RSS or via email. You won’t regret it!