Weekly Journal 103 - Media Cleanup

Media Cleanup

This week has been rather crazy. I haven’t had much time or energy for personal projects, but I did get a start on one of my media cleanup cycles. A few times a year, I like to go through my media sources and review them for relevancy. Anything that is no longer providing positive value gets dumped to make room for new sources I might find. In my case, the primary sources of media that I consume includes periodicals, RSS/ATOM feeds, podcasts, YouTube channels, and streaming video like Netflix or YouTube TV.

This helps me from having a huge backlog of media pile up because I have more sources of content than I have time to consume it. When I first started doing these reviews. I suffered from a bit the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Over time, as I have continued this practice and become more disciplined in removing media sources that are no longer useful or entertaining, the fear has faded and I actually feel better because I consume less content overall. It’s like setting down a huge mental load, and not picking it back up again. As part of my cleanup, if I have content saved in a to watch or to read list and I decide to eliminate the source, I also remove those items from backlog lists.

If you’ve never tried an exercise like this, I would highly recommend it. It’s helped me to worry less about my content backlog and has freed up time for other activities. I just wish I could jettison some of the time I spend at work as easily.