A few times over the last several decades I’ve unsubscribed from every social media account, RSS feed, newsletter, YouTube channel, etc. and started with a clean slate. My goal was, as I wrote about in 2012 on this blog, to break out of my echo chamber and hopefully expand my thinking.
Slowly resubscribing to my interests is a lot of work. But it has been worth it and I know I have been exposed to people, organizations, and information that I never would have been otherwise.
And yes, many times, the same accounts creep their way back in since I value the person’s opinion, their work, or they are great curators of the web, or are generally a creative person that I enjoy following because they inspire me.
More often, though, I’ll go through and dramatically cull my subscriptions (perhaps by about 25%) to reduce the noise, cut down on distractions, and free up some of my time. And slowly over time, I find myself subscribing to too many accounts again. And the process repeats itself at random intervals.
So I’ve decided to no longer leave this to chance. I’m going to add a regular cadence to this activity of both unsubscribing and resubscribing to new and different voices on the web. Not a completely clean slate, it just ends up being too much work, but a liberal pollarding.
In the spring, I’ll unsubscribe from at least 30% of the accounts. In the fall, I’ll find new and different accounts to follow. Hopefully to help inspire me through the long cold winter.
Tomorrow is the first day of spring, time to get out the shears.
See also: The unfollow Q&A
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