Mark All Read

July 14th, 2009

That’s right, I spent nearly all day catching up on blogs and I still have 4000 entries to read, so I had to do it ….

As terrifying as it is that I missed something – it’s also a huge weight off my back.

3 Comments

Dianna Wiggins says on: July 14, 2009 at 2:32 pm

Hi Nicole,

One Info Pro to another, I can totally relate to this. I have found it’s better to just “let go” and move on than to become overwhelmed when things take us away from being caught up on feeds. Mary Ellen Bates said to think of it as a stream going by, from which we pluck the occasional fish as needed,and I find this to be a useful metaphor. We are info pros, so we are more than capable of going back and finding it when needed, right? Thanks for sharing this feeling though, it really hits home!
Greg says on: July 15, 2009 at 8:15 pm

I used to dread missing something too but then I started to find it liberating to start a fresh. You don’t want to read “old” news anyway (there could be updates to whatever you missed) and if it was really that big of a story you can be sure it’ll come up again somewhere.
thewikiman says on: July 29, 2009 at 5:44 am

I think this isn’t just liberating, it is sometimes *essential*. We live in a society of information overload, and Information Professionals like us tend to sign up for more and more ways to be overloaded… sometimes you’ve just got to tick something off your list even if you haven’t done it.

I find the same cathartic feeling with throwing away sections of newspapers I haven’t had time to read, too. The final frontier would be pressing ‘Mark all as read’ on my work email, but sadly I don’t think that is ever, ever going to happen…