Slow Down

Life Every now and then I reach overload. There are so many films to see, so many books to read, so much musicto enjoy and there isn't enough time in the day and I just end up missing something. For over a month now I haven't seen any of the films which are in the cinema top ten. I haven't read a book published for the first time this year. I'm looking at how many websites I need to catch up on and it's just depressing. That I did buy the number one album this week is a blip. Trust one of the web's killer aps, Ask Metafilter, to offer some ideas. There is one obvious suggestion now that I think about it:

"It also helps to have no internet. The reason the internet is bad is because most of it is meta-information, though obviously there are exceptions. One of my professors in graduate school told me once that the only way to learn anything was by "sustained attention to primary sources." This is an academic way of saying that, instead of spending thirty minutes reading all of the movie reviews on Metacritic, it's better to go see the movie. In my current job I have a book bias--but it's just true, from my perspective, that the Great Books will always beat out the Mediocre Blogs."

It's very true. Readers will know that I tend to only rely on a couple of critics. I actually have a twenty-five minute rule when it comes to films. If it entirely fails to engage me in those 1,500 seconds it's probably not worth wasting the hour and a half. I also do the same thing with books although it's somewhat less structured. Now if I can work out a version for the internet ...