SpeakingFreely which is a GREAT blog posted yesterday on something I’ve been meaning to talk about.

I’ve been really busy lately, so I had to find a way to gain some more time. So I started by eliminating feeds from my RSS reader. What did I cut?

Every feed that regurgitates news, comments on news, has nothing but opinion on news, etc. There’s simply no reason to hit 3 fora and 30-300 blogs all letting me know that Terry Semel is no longer the CEO of Yahoo.

He is exactly right. Whenever I find myself marking “All as Read” on Google Reader more than a few days in a row, i immediately unsubscribe from the feed. Your reader is supposed to be a means to a more efficient internet, one that tolerates little waste and puts the power in your hands. What seems to have really happened is that with the imposition being so little, people are just accepting garbage posts. As you move down the Long Tail and down the newsroom hierarchy, the simple reporting of news has less and less value. I lost count of how many awful and uninformative posts I read about the Facebook Platform or Semel stepping down. And you know, thank God Steve Rubel wrote about the iPhone, otherwise I would have had NO idea it was coming out.

The point is this: Your time is valuable, don’t let people waste it. Robert Scoble brags about reading 600 blogs a day. That doesn’t make him smart, it makes him an idiot. I haven’t found 600 good websites on the entire internet–and my job is to sit at a computer all day and look. If a feed starts getting redundant and derivative, unsubscribe. How else will they know that users are finding their content less than satisfactory? Only when they see the numbers decline will they bother to do anything about it.

And writers: Blogs rose to prominence not for their ability to break news but to provide more detail and more perspective. What good are you doing if you turn my reader into a nerdy AP Wire? If you can’t ADD to the discussion, just sit back and listen. Not every story needs to be commented on by everybody.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble has a good enough sense of humor that he ended up linking to yesterday’s post and dropping me a comment. But one person took issue with my comment that there aren’t 600 good blogs on the internet. I’d like to make a clarification: I don’t think there are 600 good sites on the entire internet. Blogs are just a subset.

But this illuminates a very real opportunity for exploitation–both the reality and the delusion. First, good content is INCREDIBLY rare. Think of all the sites you read, how many of them actually produce what you read? Most of them are just portals to the people who are the real producers. At this point, almost all the A-list, high traffic bloggers have been done book deal. They all failed for good reason: They have very little to offer. They couldn’t expand their stories, delve into issues they’d only scratch the surface of. The idea that the internet is any less susceptible to the woes of Hollywood is ridiculous. It’s not so much that we have a system or a platform problem–we have a people problem. The wrong people are gatekeepers, the wrong people are creating, the wrong people are marketing and the rest of us simply have to accept it. So just like I can’t think of 600 good sites, I can’t think of 600 GREAT movies or 60 current great musicians. The opportunity then–as it always has been–is original and passionate art. Now, the mantra of “just have good content” is too easily tossed around but that doesn’t make it untrue. The problem is no one takes it seriously, no one really tries. But the idea that we can replace Hollywood megalomaniacs with Silicon Valley dorks isn’t going to cut it.

Two, people are so desperate to consume content that they’re willing to accept up to 600 sites a day. That means there is a ton of opportunity, and being talented makes you a commodity. So what you have is a massive market and no one is serving it. The latent demand for quality is there but the people who can satiate it have fallen down on the job.

But you tell me: Is there anywhere near 600 blogs worth reading on a daily basis? I have a solid 150 and maybe–and I mean maybe–6-10 posts a day do I find myself glad I to have read. If so, where are they hiding? And why is Scoble the only one who seems to have tracked them down?

Just finished “My War Gone By, I Miss It So” by Anthony Loyd. It was absolutely breathtaking. At times it’s over written but this guy has a mastery of language that we could all aspire to. He’ll turn a phrase that stops you cold and leaves you with a sort of admiration and clarity. It’s very Fight Club-esque in its grasp of the existential vacuum; an Into the Wild for war. Staggered beneath the tales of a war correspondent are the diaries of a heroin addict attempting to make sense of his habit. And beneath the darkness and despair is a keen understanding of the human condition and the desire for “feeling” wherever it may come.

If you’re impressed with the way Philalawyer juxtaposes self-awareness and a sort of helpless self-loathing, you’ll be blown away here. The sometimes verbose passages are justified in light of the fact that nearly every other war book is underwritten and under analyzed. Numbness or self-glorification, the two poles that capture most battles memoirs are non-existent in Loyd’s work. I would put it up there with any of the Greek epics on war. In fact, I think we’ll see Loyd continue to find resonance as the next generation tries to make sense of the wars of their parents.

If you’ve struggled with depression at all, you can see how perceptive Loyd is to his own condition. It is very, very difficult to put those thoughts to words, to analyze why and how you feel in a way that is possible for others to relate to. Go buy it. Seriously.

I used to be really into financial stuff. I read all those books “The Millionaire Next Door” “Rich Dad Poor Dad” etc. Of course, I’ve been a subscriber to “Get Rich Slowly” for a while too. (Got linked there a few months ago) And then I threw all that shit out the window and have never been happier. I used to check my bank balance constantly, I monitored my credit card bill all the time and generally stressed about money at every chance I could. Don’t get me wrong, it allowed me to save a lot of money but it made me miserable. I do still think it’s important to keep a check on your credit score however. As this article from lendingexpert.co.uk demonstrates, you can be rejected for a credit card or personal loan on the basis of your credit score. But I’ve still had to make some changes.

Today was the final straw. Look at this list of ways to save money at GRS:

At what point does frugality trump enjoying life? You work everyday but you don’t deserve soda? There is a fine line between self-discipline and self-flagellation. That stuff infuriates me, it’s about control not efficiency. We work so we may fully experience life, afford ourselves opportunity for meaning and satisfaction. Why on earth would you nickel and dime yourself in that way? I would assert that the humiliation of scrounging for trash bags isn’t worth the 2 dollars you’d spend on a box of them. The air conditioner was invented to make life in a house more pleasant, cheaply. So use it. I could keep going, and explain the reasons that a used clothing, awful home cooked dinners, bicycling, appliance-less lifestyle is cheap for a reason, but it’s not worth the time. All I have to add is this:

For the first time in my life I’ve stopped caring about money. I ceded control and just let it ride. I’m working more than I ever have for relatively little but it doesn’t bother me. It will all work itself out in the end. I’m investing in my happiness instead of some arbitrary number. What’s that line Ray Liotta said in “Blow,”…”money isn’t real, people just think that it is.” The benchmark I use now is “Would I pay someone to take this off my mind?” and if the answer is yes, I consider the consequences the cost and proceed without worry. Sometimes–as Tucker pointed out to me–they’ll be high but all the lows will even it out. Isn’t ridding yourself of the burden worth it? How enjoyable can life be when you refuse even the most basic sustenance technology?

So seriously, throw away the all that shit–your recycling box, your parking tickets, you neurotic habits–and see if your quality of life improves. I’ll bet you’ll be more productive and happier. The money you don’t save in the process is just payment for services rendered and I’d say that’s a pretty good deal.