Waiting on Diamonds to Play with the Rough
August 1, 2008 by Ryan
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Image by oscar alexander
How do I prioritize my rocks?
Earlier I posted about the overload I willingly subjected myself to and how confused I was about tackling it. In the few days it’s been since then I have really enjoyed all the interaction and new connections I’ve made now that I, as of this moment, follow 585 people on Twitter and 135 people on Plurk. How does it work trying to talk to 700+ people? It’s actually a lot of fun! I plan on posting soon about some observations, thoughts and insight from this new experience.
My question a few days ago was, “How do I process all this information?” I got some great comments of sympathy and shared exasperation, as well as great tips from very wise sources! Even though I joke a little about my dad, his advice about chunking tasks was echoed in a ZenHabits post here. As I read that today, a couple things stood out to me:
- Find your essentials
- Find your time-wasters
- Do your Biggest Rock first
The fact that I really took the time to read and think about this post came from an adjustment since starting this self inflicted onslaught. I love Leo’s posts! I get so much out of them! I’ve noticed that in my Reader I tend to put off reading my favorite sources and rip through the posts that I’m confident I can scan and be satisfied. That’s completely backwards! I’m only doing it to get that “unread” number down! One of my new friends twittered today that she had 1,000 posts to get through on her reader! And I thought I had a problem! (It’s okay Erin, my wife’s almost as behind!) But realizing I was spending the majority of my time working though information that was lowest value. Imagine if that was money! Actually, now that I think about it, we do that too! How much time do we spend on activities that have the lowest return! I guess that’s the whole 80/20 Pareto Principle!
Now it comes down to implementing these realizations into my information diet. Here’s a few questions I’m asking:
- Is this information intake inline with my goals?
- How much time am I willing to dedicate to this information source?
- How do I value this information’s ROI?
- Am I putting those with the highest value first?
I’m still in process with all of this and may revisit it again, but I’m curious how all my new “friends” are coming along. Do share!
This post is part of my Information Overload Series
- How Do You Process All This Information?!
- Waiting on Diamonds to Play with the Rough
How Do You Process All This Information?!
July 22, 2008 by Ryan
I have 28 34 (and counting) blogs that I read through my Google Reader. I follow 100 +600 people on Twitter & Plurk (thanks to ProBlogger). I find more and more friends from childhood, high school, college, etc. on Facebook everyday. How do I process all this information!?
I’ve actually cut down the number of blogs that I read (I had some that would post 5-6 times a day)! My reading of ZenHabits has got me to try and simplify. But at the same time, I just added like 80 people to my Twitter/Plurk/Facebook! One good thing is that the additions are not as demanding as the blogs. Which reminds me! I have like 5-6 books that I want to read!
I guess it comes down to priority. What priority is all of this information for me to get through? How thoroughly do I want to digest each source? It’s pretty easy to “fill up on junk food” with all the social networking. Even some of the blogs are low-nutrition! I know that I should spend more time of the information that has the best return on investment (i.e. books, quality blog posts & family info streams). Being that I aspire to income generating blogging, I also need to invest time into developing contacts and relationships. So, while there is going to be a good deal of personally irrelevant info, I do plan on spending time with my “new” friends.
Anyone else dealing with this? How do you handle it?
This post is part of my Information Overload Series
- How Do You Process All This Information?!
- Waiting on Diamonds to Play with the Rough
Pray for Jeremy
November 27, 2007 by Ryan
It’s hard to describe the emotional rollercoaster my family has been through this last 2 weeks. For those of you who have not heard, we have some concerns for our little boy, Jeremy Michael. He’s due in early March. I’ve waited to write about this until my wife had and she did a good job of explaining what we’re up against.
We’re Pregnant!
When we found out we were pregnant it was a pleasant surprise: we weren’t trying, but we weren’t not trying. It actually was about perfect because the baby would be about two years apart from our daughter Kimberly. I really did not care whether it was a boy or a girl. If it was a girl, Kimberly would have a sister right close to her age. If it was a boy, hey! it’s our first boy!
Saying Hi to Jeremy
About two weeks ago, we went in for our doctor’s ultrasound. I just Twittered…
Just saying hi to Baby Jeremy @ my wife’s ultrasound!
After the ultrasound, I went to take care of Kimberly as Beth went to go talk to the doctor. The doctor called me in. She said us down and told us they saw some things that concerned her and that we’d need to go see a specialist. Needless to say we were in quite a bit of shock. I think I had always assumed everything would be okay. I think most parents in general think that way.
We went to see the specialist the next day, which was nice to not have this unknown hanging over our heads for too long. He did another ultrasound and then sat us down to talk about it. Again, I’m not going to rehash all the details, Beth did a good job in her post. From that discussion we were faced with that reality that our little boy had Spina Bifida and the possibility of worse. The doctor explained that there might be a chromosome defect and we then spoke with a genetic specialist. She told us that the most likely of the rare problems we could have would be Trisomy 13, which would most likely mean we wouldn’t have him for very long.
Perspective
I was going to write that it “hit us like a ton of bricks” but, honestly, we were fairly calm about all of it. There have been things that have come up in the last while that, I believe, happened to prepare us. We’re very blessed to have the perspective that we do. We know that whatever happens, in the grand scheme of things, we’ll be okay. We know that if he was only with us a short time, we wouldn’t be losing him forever. If we do get to have him, whatever challenges he’s going to have we can do it. Not on our own, but with the Lord’s help. We have wonderful families that will be there. We know that we’ve been seal as a family, and that we will be together after this life.
The Results
As it turns out, I have been writing this post here and there since that time and we found out that there are no chromosome problems! And we are so grateful and happy that there aren’t. I want to thank all those that prayed for us. One of the first thoughts that I had was to call my family and ask them to pray for Jeremy. And we still need those prayers and that faith. Now we know that Jeremy will be with us for a long time and now we are praying that he will be able to walk and not require a shunt.
I am so excited to have him. I love him already. Knowing how much I love Kimberly, I can’t wait to have my little boy!
IE7 Good, Firefox Better, Flock Best!?
November 20, 2007 by Ryan
Today, reading through my RSS feeds, I ran across this post about Firefox and a new browser called Flock. It caught my attention because I have been a big fan of Firefox. I seriously get annoyed with Internet Explorer. I hate how it screws with my websites and how it messes up transparency on png files!
I have been a longtime user of Firefox. I love the tabbed browsing. I love all the customization and extensions. But I have noticed with how many tabs I typically have, Firefox can get pretty heavy on the memory usage on my computers. At home on my laptop it’s less of a concern, but at work with my measly little memory it can lock things up pretty easily. That’s what caught my eye in the TechCrunch post.
I’d read about Flock before…well, more just skimmed over a post about it. It’s big thing is that it’s a “social browser.” It tries to integrate more of the social networks people use (blogs, flickr, del.icio.us, Twitter, etc., etc.) and do so more seamlessly into the browser. I decided to give it a shot, downloaded it and have been pulling in some of my accounts. In fact, I am writing this post from Flock!
Blogged with Flock
