Josh On Design

Last night I declared Internet Bankruptcy.

As grown increasingly clear this year, I simply don't have the time to keep up with the info-deluge that constitutes my morning routine: coffee. email. RSS feeds. Facebook. Twitter, more email yet again. second coffee.

Bedtime is a mirror image: Brush teeth. News feeds. If sleep has not arrived then I turn to custom news apps for Reddit, The Verge, Hacker News, and more. It never ends.

Always behind, always frustrated. Spending hours keeping up with news in a rapidly changing industry. I need to stop. Keeping up is a futile exercise. There is simply too much. And my time is better spent keeping the house clean, playing with Jesse, or, you know, actually working. Time to change.

I've declared internet bankruptcy. It's the only way. I hope you will forgive me. While I'm not completely unsubscribing to everything, I've greatly pruned back my social networking and news reading accounts. Here's the damage:

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are still present, but I massively pruned back the friends/followers/circles/etc.

News feeds. The bane of my existence. Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I unsubscribed to all of my RSS feeds on Google Reader, about 500ish feeds. I'm sure I'll be slowly adding some important ones over the coming year, but I have to start fresh.

Google Plus: Somehow I had two Google accounts. If you were following me on G+ with joshmarinacci@gmail.com you'll need to switch to my main account. I actually deleted the gmail account; in the process discovering just how much data Google tracks about me across their many properties. Now they only have half as much.

Pintrest: I can't figure out how to actually delete my account, so I deleted the app and turned off email notifications.

LinkedIn Oddly, no changes. They give me the right amount of information without overloading my inbox.

Apps: Deleted the many site specific apps on my phone, including The Verge, Blue Alien (Reddit), and Hacker News. I left MagPi and The Magazine because they are only updated every few weeks.

I think that's it. At least for now. We'll see what the next few days hold. If I unfriended/unfollowed/untracked you, please don't take it personally. I simply have to shrink my daily e-footprint. We thank you for your support.