Creating Passionate Users: The myth of "keeping up".

This post hit home for me – I have a continual pile of “stuff” to read ranging from product whitepaper (l’ve been meaning to read up on Compute Cluster forever), Arena editions, T3 which friends bought me a subscriptions for,The Sunday Times (it is the Sunday Papers), Naked Conversations, iCon, Directions on Microsoft and so much more.

It’s good to know that nobody is keeping up though and Kathy Sierra does a great job of giving advice on how you can lower your anxiety levels though. Here are my favourites:

  • find the best aggregators – including people. Reminded me of Ferrazi’s book but also the chats I have with folks like Terry, Katie, my bro and several others. They all have high signal to noise ratio
  • get summaries – spooky as I was just about to post an entry talking about GetAbstract which thoughtfully the company subscribes to for me. Seriously, this is a great site that makes me look way more well read than I am :)
  • unsubscribe to as many things as possible - well Outlook’s spam filter helps me here but I did do a major purge recently of crap I was subscribed to. Getting off some companies distribution lists though is like pulling teeth.
  • include some stuff from outside your field – I really SHOULD start reading some more National Geogrpahic as Anna tells me to

So I took a deep breath and agreed with Kathy – I WILL NEVER KEEP UP - though I do have some tips of my own

  • get a mobile news aggregator – I use Newsbreak on my Pocket PC and it’s great for a quick shot of news when I’m on the Tube. Particularly Overheard in New York :)
  • print stuff – paper still works and though I know I posted about the BBC and NYTimes Vista stuff this week, Caffe Nero will still be in business in 20 years time because people like me (and half of Chiswick it seems) like to go down to the coffee shop, chill out and read stuff. Too many Buggaboos for my likin but hey…
  • holidays – they’re for reading. Well, i think so
  • have a think day – Bill does a Think Week (twice a year now I think) so I try to do a Think Day about once a month. I print off a mountain of stuff, take my tablet, grab a few magazines and drink a LOT of coffee.

How do you keep up, or don’t you?