As an experiment, I decided to kill my aggregator. The idea was to take the few handfuls of feeds I really enjoy and/or depend on, put them back in my browser and use Firefox’s nice “Open In Tabs” feature. Within a week I was hooked on my new method and a little angry. Turns out I was duped. I believed my aggregator was a helpful tool and the week without demonstrated just how unhelpful it really is. Current aggregators are adjustable shovels—could be a little garden trowel or maybe a huge diesel-powered back hoe. Lucky you! Your job is to poke through the mound of content they so quickly made for you with a pair of tweezers, rooting out the good bits. So I was angry at myself for wasting time and for falling down the dead-end technology trap once again. Nothing is for free; your attention is precious.

A few interesting attention-related articles have been bubbling up the various meme sites: Why can’t you pay attention anymore? from CNET and Linda Stone’s talk on Continous Partial Attention. Just what an info junkie hypochondriac needs.