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Turning Down the Social Noise

October 6, 2008 by Rob Bazinet

Tweet

goodbye It was about a month ago and I was sitting here in my home office reading some Twitter tweets and catching up on some blog reading and a series of tweets came by the screen from one of the .NET folks with the loudest mouth and the least to say with just another gripefest about Microsoft and other .NET developers not as bright as he.  I bet if you think not-so-hard you can figure out who this person is and I won’t have to tell you.

It was at that very moment that I had a vision or you could say a defining moment in the pattern of blogs and people I follow on Twitter.   I figured it was time to weed out the “dead wood” in my blog roll, the people I follow on Twitter and the podcasts I listen to in order to stop the white noise of my day and become more focused and more productive.

So, my three step process to kill the noise:

  • The process I started with was to go through all the people I follow on Twitter and unfollowed anyone who basically has very little to say that is not worth my time even to give a quick glance.  If I followed you before there is a good chance I don’t follow you now, no offense but there wasn’t much worth reading so I had to bid farewell.  Robert Scoble was one such person who thought they had something to say but in reality they just blew hot air.
  • I then viewed my blog roll to see how many people I subscribed to that I more often than not marked their posts as read when realizing it was a post about nothing.  This takes time to do and is a distraction in my day, so unsubscribing I did and removed over 100 blogs that offered very little.
  • The third thing to remove any podcast that was just rehash of something I could hear about somewhere else and just keep building up in iTunes, making me feel like I was not keeping up.  Actually I am keeping up better without this junk which filled iTunes.  DotNetRocks was one of these such podcasts which used to add to me commute with banter but now, working from home, I don’t need it. 

After a month of much reduced noise I feel better about the time I have to work and more time I have due to removing those things most distracting.  Once I stood back and looked at the changes I made I found something interesting, probably 90% of those people I removed from the list I was following on Twitter or in my blog roll were .NET-related people.  What does this say, .NET people either all say the same things, have very little of value to say or maybe both.  I am not sure but thinking about those removed and what they talked about, it was mostly uninteresting and redundant. 

The folks I continue to follow are mostly Ruby folks or those talking about software engineering related topics which don’t have a focus on a particular platform or are related to running a uISV.  The majority of those removed spewed uninteresting banter about .NET and added little to the MSDN archives on the Microsoft web site.

I have to say I feel great, I feel liberated and I feel like I made some good decisions for my personal well-being.  Sorry to those I don’t follow any longer, nothing personal, but you need to say some more interesting things and make it worth my time.

Technorati Tags: Dead Wood,Efficiency,Time Management

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Comments

  1. Dan Bernier says

    October 6, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    I’ve heard it said that an important part of intelligence is being able to figure out what you can ignore. I think of that every time I spring-clean my rss and twitter.
    Amy Hoy also talks about Informational Hygiene: http://www.slash7.com/…/informational-h

  2. Dan Bernier says

    October 6, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    I’ve heard it said that an important part of intelligence is being able to figure out what you can ignore. I think of that every time I spring-clean my rss and twitter.

    Amy Hoy also talks about Informational Hygiene: http://www.slash7.com/…/informational-h

  3. Rob Bazinet says

    October 6, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    @Dan – I could not agree more. It seems it is easy to collect too many contacts in Twitter or subscribe to one more rss feed without regard to the overall impact of what that feed might add.
    I find very little use in so many .NET related feeds with authors simply rehashing what I can find elsewhere and usually from the source.
    Ignoring almost 100% of .NET feeds alone has made it so much nicer and more quiet and I am missing nothing at all.
    Thanks for the link.

  4. Rob Bazinet says

    October 6, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    @Dan – I could not agree more. It seems it is easy to collect too many contacts in Twitter or subscribe to one more rss feed without regard to the overall impact of what that feed might add.

    I find very little use in so many .NET related feeds with authors simply rehashing what I can find elsewhere and usually from the source.

    Ignoring almost 100% of .NET feeds alone has made it so much nicer and more quiet and I am missing nothing at all.

    Thanks for the link.

  5. Justice~! says

    October 8, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    I remember our conversation regarding this person you mention at the beginning of your post. Your time is your most valuable commodity and for sure you need to be able to guard it, especially from people who are not worth it.
    I agree with you about the redundancy of .NET feeds. Seems like a lot of people just either link to the same news everyone talks about or parrot the same thoughts.

  6. Justice~! says

    October 8, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    I remember our conversation regarding this person you mention at the beginning of your post. Your time is your most valuable commodity and for sure you need to be able to guard it, especially from people who are not worth it.

    I agree with you about the redundancy of .NET feeds. Seems like a lot of people just either link to the same news everyone talks about or parrot the same thoughts.

  7. Rob Bazinet says

    October 8, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    @justice Ah, yes I remember our conversation as well. I should thank him for his arrogance as it was an eye opener to the time I was wasting. I have narrowed down my feeds and people on Twitter and is much more manageable.

  8. Rob Bazinet says

    October 8, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    @justice Ah, yes I remember our conversation as well. I should thank him for his arrogance as it was an eye opener to the time I was wasting. I have narrowed down my feeds and people on Twitter and is much more manageable.

  9. Keyvan Nayyeri says

    October 8, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Rob,
    I agree that you have had a wise decision and I may end up with something similar as I’ve been suffering from some guys, too.
    But I just want to note that you wouldn’t expect Twitter to act as a technical stream of information because IMHO Twitter is something more personal than technical and it’s been used as a way to give out personal status than technical information and I?ve used that in this way.
    Btw, as you don’t follow me on Twitter, I hope that I’m not that guy πŸ™‚

  10. Keyvan Nayyeri says

    October 8, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Rob,

    I agree that you have had a wise decision and I may end up with something similar as I’ve been suffering from some guys, too.

    But I just want to note that you wouldn’t expect Twitter to act as a technical stream of information because IMHO Twitter is something more personal than technical and it’s been used as a way to give out personal status than technical information and I?ve used that in this way.

    Btw, as you don’t follow me on Twitter, I hope that I’m not that guy πŸ™‚

  11. Rob Bazinet says

    October 8, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    @keyvan – I can honestly say NO, you are not the one. I was following you on Twitter actually, not sure what happened. You appear to have a secure Twitter account now so maybe I got bumped. I have requested to follow now though. πŸ™‚
    I agree Twitter is a bit different than blogs but I have found much the same value but in smaller chunks. Tweets are usually just something you say that is not long enough for a blog post.
    My pull back from Twitter and blogs was really just to cut the noise down from those saying the same thing all the time. It seemed to be mainly .NET blogs and now for the folks I follow on both Twitter and on their blogs, I am getting better information, little repeat and removed the aggravation.

  12. Rob Bazinet says

    October 8, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    @keyvan – I can honestly say NO, you are not the one. I was following you on Twitter actually, not sure what happened. You appear to have a secure Twitter account now so maybe I got bumped. I have requested to follow now though. πŸ™‚

    I agree Twitter is a bit different than blogs but I have found much the same value but in smaller chunks. Tweets are usually just something you say that is not long enough for a blog post.

    My pull back from Twitter and blogs was really just to cut the noise down from those saying the same thing all the time. It seemed to be mainly .NET blogs and now for the folks I follow on both Twitter and on their blogs, I am getting better information, little repeat and removed the aggravation.

  13. Keyvan Nayyeri says

    October 8, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    Rob,
    Yes, that makes sense. I can understand what you mean by these reputations πŸ™‚

  14. Keyvan Nayyeri says

    October 8, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    Rob,

    Yes, that makes sense. I can understand what you mean by these reputations πŸ™‚

  15. Cautioning the .NET Community says

    October 30, 2008 at 11:03 am

    RE: Turning Down the Social Noise

    Caring about the community, especially a growing .NET community that wants to compete with successful communities like Java, is very important for those who are a part of this ecosystem. As you have seen on my blog, I care about the community and what

  16. Cautioning the .NET Community Against Exaggerators says

    October 30, 2008 at 11:03 am

    RE: Turning Down the Social Noise

    Caring about the community, especially a growing .NET community that wants to compete with successful communities like Java, is very important for those who are a part of this ecosystem. As you have seen on my blog, I care about the community and what

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