I have been on an unsubscribing kick lately. And I’m not the only one.
People who track and parse the trends of social media (which is currently being transitioned into “the new media” and which will, soon enough, become just “media”) have been saying this for a long time: attention is the new currency. In other words, if you’ve been paying any kind of attention, this is non-news.
But from the dismaying and ever-expanding swath of garbage I have to wade through every day to get to fresh, open waters, I’d say most people have yet to get the memo. And I say that having already deliberately and painstakingly filtered the firehose down to a relative trickle. I follow fewer than 100 people on Twitter. I have only a dozen or so “always” blogs in my Google Reader. I use delicious and FriendFeed to collect and collate, not chat nor find new material. I stay the hell away from YouTube entirely, just reading the comments there is often enough to lower one’s IQ 50 points, not to mention plunge one into a black hole of depression. I will visit HuffPo only out of absolute necessity, and only long enough enough to hit the “Instapaper-izer” bookmarklet I installed on my browser to strip it and its ilk of their Downtown Vegas-like flashing carnival lightshow of crappery.
And yes, Facebook “friends”, many of you who are redundant, dour, knee-jerk cheerful, or too talky, especially around the business offerings, just don’t show up in my feed at all anymore.
I am not a highly-sensitive person like my friend, Havi, and I never saw that old ’90s movie where Julianne Moore became allergic to everything, but as I let go of the clutter I’ve used both to insulate myself from and inure myself to sensation, I’m freaking out a little bit over how crowded and noisy everything has gotten in the past seven or so years. I mean, I’m as delighted as the next gal about the democratization of dissemination that owning the means of production has created, but does EVERYONE have to make EVERYTHING ALL the time? And with quite so many %#@$ modal windows?
A brief history of the Web 2.0 gold rush
It’s not like any of this is news. When most normal people, i.e., non-ADD types and non-change addicts, first come to social media, they ask the same question: how do you deal with the noise?1
To which the standard reply from a responsible social media tour guide is two-fold:
- Reduce input to what is necessary
- Filter the rest with tools and processes
In the beginning, we tended to err on the side of too much info and rely on tools and processes to manage it. Them was heady times, the land-grab days, and we didn’t want to miss a minute of it. And yes, it sounds goofy, but there was a great big bunch of us who were writing about the same stuff we were reading about, the stuff we were always interested in, that we were now finally able to swap stories about (productivity pr0n was a big one) and the stuff that was brand spanking new that we were trying to wrap our heads around (i.e. social/”the new” media). I was as guilty as anyone, and guess what? I’m not even the least bit ashamed. This was well before social media hit pop-will-eat-itself levels. There were a handful of gossip bloggers. There were (blessedly) no mommybloggers.2 Back then, it was such a relief to be able to have conversations and interactions instead of just consuming page after mind-numbing page of webular data, I loved it all, including the then-occasional “10 Best Whatever” post. I subscribed to blogs, to newsletters, I joined forums and Yahoo! groups. I did way too much, but I learned a lot, which I was then able to sift through, process, and synthesize in purportedly useful ways to people joining the party late.
And then, all of a sudden, a little bit at a time, I realized: I was done.
Done with ubiquity. Done with ravenous, voracious intake. I am back to reading judiciously about process, and intensely in new areas of interest. So I unsubscribed, and unfollowed, and deactivated, and generally went elsewhere. There are plenty of people who have a deep and enduring interest in exploring and sharing the stuff I once did, and some of them are even doing it responsibly, thank goodness, meaning they are not just yakking about social effing media, but talking about it from some sort of useful context. If you’re climbing aboard now, you should find one of these people. They’re fairly easy to spot, if you like the tenor of my blog.
Walking my own (not-)talk
In February of this year, I did something fairly radical for me: I told people to unsubscribe.
The engagement levels of my newsletter had been dropping for a few months, and I was despondent. Not that I don’t spend a great deal of time on this blog, I do!, but I spend even more time on my newsletter, proportionately, plus it costs me money to send out every month. This is one thing when you’re working, and when your newsletter is bringing you clients; it’s quite another when you’re purposely on self-imposed sabbatical and essentially paying for other people to read your work and they’re not.
The solution suddenly seemed simple: tell the people who were disinterested that it was fine for them to go. So I did. My unsubscribe rates are now just about dead even with my subscribe rates, so the cost is holding steady. But the range of feelings I was suddenly exposed to was far more valuable than the few bucks that went back into my pocket.
I would be offended and/or surprised at who left, and almost immediately after, I would be joyous. I was letting go! They were letting go! We were all free to go wherever we pleased! I got a taste of what it feels like to be filtered out, along with a kind of permission to filter more honestly. Walking the talk! What a concept!
The remains of the day
What’s left is a profound gratitude for who’s left, because they’re really choosing to be fully present with me, plus a kind of focus I never felt before. I am paying more and more attention to what it is that interests me, and trusting that everyone else is grownup enough to do the same. I’m enjoying the hell out of the time I do spend in social media, and what I read and share there. Out of the nothing, a something emerges, and I realize that this is all one process, and that it doesn’t end until we do: we take in, we interact, we synthesize, we release. The landscape of our lives is always changing, just like life is always changing. It’s so obvious, it’s ridiculous, but there it is.
I look at what is left of all I’ve learned from so much time spent absorbing these various modalities of communication, at what has stayed with me, and I start to get a sense of how I might be useful to people when I emerge from self-imposed sabbatical. I’ve been playing with it a bit here and there, quietly test-driving it with a few longtime clients who are, for whatever reasons, also happy to play in this space, to cop a coach-y term. I’m hopeful that by February, when the odometer on my year rolls over, I’ll have some clear and useful offering to extend more widely.
In the meantime, though, I hope that if you are here, you will be really here with me. And that if you are not, you will feel free to let go. And that if there are impediments to your finding utility here, a lack of organization in some critical area, or a missing delivery system, you’ll let me know, either via a comment or an email. Comments and emails remain a constant, I do not see giving them up anytime soon.
You are my great love, giver of useful feedback, engager in meaningful conversation. I will give up much to share in this way…
xxx
c
1In fairness, the first question many people ask is, “What the hell is the point of this crap?”, but these folk are unlikely to use social media for any purposes, good or ill.)
2There were plenty of mothers who happened to blog, and some outstanding blogs from them. They just weren’t the ad-splattered, Proctor-and-Gamblized, black holes of mediocrity you find in such woeful numbers today.
Image by woodley wonderworks via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
I am new to your blog and newsletter, but it seems like a good fit for me so far. I have been over engaged with a lot of crap for several years and am just starting to build business myself. I know that I need to be very conscious of what I allow to fill my in box and how much time I spend on it. I hope I can learn form those more experienced like yourself how to best navigate this world, and in return provide something worthwhile myself. Thanks for the honesty!
I ought to have a “starter kit” of books, posts, videos, etc. for people just jumping in. I can imagine how the whole thing is really overwhelming; starting felt overwhelming to me, which is why I ultimately hired a coach. (Which really helped. But yeah, you have to find the right one of those, too.)
The only problem with that is that info needs constant updating. I recently pulled the links to all the recos I made because the recos were so old. And I’m not sure I can sign up for constant updating anymore.
Well, I am *not* unsubscribing….So deal.
Gorgeous post, gorgeously written. Streamlining and focus, today, perhaps one of the great last acts of rebellion. Stand in your power, walk with intention.
xo.
You are one of those people I recommend other people to follow. Even though you’re relatively new to the program, you have a true understanding for how the whole thing works.
Writers! Follow Justine Musk if you want to understand platform!
I love this post! So many times I’ve wanted to unsubscribe from the constant flow of emails I click on every day just so I can get to the important information I need– like actual client emails! But I imagine the person on the other end who is offended by my uncaring click on the “unsubscribe” key. Oh, the Catholic guilt gets the best of me… most of the time. I love your newsletters!
Do it!
Or at least do the interim trick: set up a mail rule for their stuff to go straight to the trash.
I’m a Catholic Jew, honey. I know from guilt.
Love this approach Colleen.
I tend to go in cycles. I sign up for newsletters and subscribe to way to many blogs. I let them run their course for a few weeks and if I like what I see then I enjoy and engage.
If I get bombarded with crap in that short space of time then I’m out of there.
I used to take it personally when people unsubscribed from my newsletter but actually my rate is really low and I always follow up and ask.
It’s generally due to overload and them unsubscribing – which means my newsletter ain’t providing them with enough value – or like you said they’re just not the right audience.
Great honesty, I grant you more decluttering in the future as social media becomes new media becomes media and then perhaps even edia…
Natalie
[...] and I always follow up and ask.
Okay, now I have to ask: what kind of feedback are you getting? Is it valuable enough that it’s worth risking further irritating/encumbering someone?
I’d love to know *why* people unsub, but I long ago stopped clicking the “reason why” drop-down menu b/c honestly, life’s too short. And I figure if *I* get that annoyed, other people must be, too.
Of course, I am far more peevish, cranky and hard-assed than most of the people I encounter. Yeah. Need to work on that in ’11.
Brilliant post, Colleen. As I just wrote on Facebook (the irony is not lost on me), sometimes what you write seems so much like what I’m doing or thinking, that I’m sure I have to come to LA and camp out in your living room. But never fear. I compensate by commenting on your blog.
If you wanted to stay in my living room, it would be camping—I don’t have a couch.
Also, there’s that big campfire in the middle, where the table used to go. Times is tough.
Amen, sugar.
I have no reply to this—an “amen” to the “amen” would be ridiculous. But I am impelled to remark on the marvelousness of your very, very green scarf. So there.
As of February 2011, I will have retired from my 34-year government job. (Is there something about February?) And I’m a Virgo, too. So, I can’t (dontwanna) unsubscribe. Pleeeeease don’t make me! It’s part of what I desperately need to prepare for the next part of my life. For example, considering the Resistor and The Edge has been really helpful, thank you! (There are dozens of others already.)
Oh, dear me, no! No one *has* to unsubscribe, ever! As Mom used to say: “It’s a party, so you can eat what you want.”
Glad the Resistor and The Edge are doing their respective jobs.
Once again, you’re spot-on (and you write it so beautifully). Part of me feels guilty letting go (like cookie C. above) and another part feels like I’ll be missing something important if I do so. I used to have the same feeling with my stack of New Yorkers; I thought that I’d miss reading a great article that would make a huge difference in my life, etc. The truth is, being able to let go of things (whether it’s a magazine, an email subscription, a false belief about myself, a toxic acquaintance, etc.), while initially scary, has given me so much strength and clarity about who I am and how I want to spend my time.
I always, always, always feel like there’s a party going on somewhere that I’m missing out on. And guess what? I AM CORRECT.
What finally started to happen about two years ago was that I no longer cared. Oh, sweet merciful heavens. If I had known being a middle-aged lady was so spectacular, I would have spent so much less time dreading and so much more time enjoying the chief benefit of my youth, a.k.a. vigor.
The excellence of vigor is not to be underestimated!
Colleen:
you remind me of my my Yoda/mother taught me a long time go: always leave the party while it’s in full swing. You’ll have a good time, and still remember it;)
The most distasteful kind of inbox suitors are those who imply you’re missing out: everyone else is signing up, they’re giving *you* the opportunity to gain (insert: traffic, fame, youth, beauty, riches, etc.) by handing over your content. Those sites do know they’re dispensing empty calories.
Funny, my motto for the longest time was “always go to the party expecting to have a bad time; that way, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.”
Grouch though I can be—and you know intimately, like few others, what a grouch I can be—I abhor pressure/scarcity tactics. I think it’s the section in Cialdini’s book that gave me the worst chills. Not that Bob’s a bad egg! Don’t kill the messenger, etc.
Patti beat me to it. i look back at all of the platforms i was on and think, “what was i thinking?!” and then i remember exactly what you said here…oh yeah, it was different back then. these days i want less and less and less of it. and as i pare down, i suddenly remember platforms i love, but have often neglected (Flickr) and fall in love with them again. but i am not unsubscribing, sister…you already know i’m a faithful member of the Communicatrix fan club.
Oh, it was such madcap fun back in the early days! We were so bright-eyed, so hopeful! And then the douchebags stormed the castle. Heck, they didn’t even storm: they just dumbed things down in such numbers, they drowned out most of the hope.
It is fun, though, rediscovering the parts we love(d) about the old web. Quietly, this time. Nothing to look at over here! Just minding my own beeswax!
I can relate to following too many blogs, I recently subscribed to a lot of blogs, as a new blogger, but now I need to start cutting back. I wade through too many emails everyday!
We all go through it. It should probably be baked into the 101 how-to posts. Oversubscribe! Go insane! Cut back! Live life normally!
As someone who has been blogging for almost as long as you, I have been coming to a similar conclusion. I think part of the problem is that “new” media is different in old media in one fundamental way — it drastically changes the relationship between reader and writer. There used to be a writer who published in a book or magazine, and we consumed his work, much like we do with when we go to a movie or play. Now we aren’t just consumers, but writers and photographers and creative people ourselves, and we won’t take no for an answer. So many of us live in this self-enclosed world where we are writing ideas and stories for others who are writing ideas and stories, and it is hard to know whether they are interested in your ideas or stories, or if they want you to be interested in their ideas or stories, or whether you are “friends,” or who even has good ideas or stories? It was just easier when you bought a novel written by, say, Stephen King, and you read it without expectations, never expecting him to read your blog, or to return you DM on Twitter, or to consider your creativity!
You raise an excellent point, Neil. The lines are blurry now.
One of the things that’s been hardest for me is assuring people that just because I don’t read everything they write, or subscribe to everything, or any EVERYTHING, doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I get that it rankles. There are a few people on Twitter, for example, whom I follow who don’t follow me. And they’re not celebs. We hail from the same stratum, and even run with the same people. But they don’t follow me.
What’s been interesting is to watch my own reactions to this. The hurt! The umbrage! The etcetera!
What I try to keep in mind is this: first, that you have NO idea why someone doesn’t read/follow/whatever. None! So let that go.
Second—and way more important—is to consider the relationship. Do you like this person? Is your relationship good? Do you maybe get along great in some places, and not others? Most people, for example, I do not talk to on the phone. Some I’ve met and never want to see in person again, but love to read their blogs. Some people I love to email with.
Finally, there’s the issue of medium and people’s tolerance for delivery systems. Video makes me crazy, esp. when it’s too long. Ditto audio, when I’m not in the car or walking. I would much rather read than watch or listen, most of the time. It’s why it took me so long to podcast, or to make videos. I’m all, “Who the effin’ eff wants this crap?”
And some people who are really, really awesome live, or live in front of a crowd are just not not my kind of writer, or even performer on video.
That’s ultimately how I try to explain this whole thing to people closer to me who are hurt or even just baffled by me not following them on Twitter, or unsubscribing to whatever. Do I talk to you on the phone? Do I take actual time out of my actual life and drive my actual body to a mutually-agreed-upon place to meet up? Do I, in other words, give you TIME and ATTENTION in person?
Then what are you really upset about when I don’t follow you on Twitter?
Am here. You are valuable to me. It strikes me that I actually wouldn’t know how to engage any further with you. Hmm.
First, thank you. As a relative latecomer to this blogging thing whom I am delighted to have stumbled onto, you are living proof of the reason to keep trying new stuff. So I’m glad the feeling is mutual, though if it ever stops being so, I trust you will give me the heave-ho. Gently, b/c that’s your style. Now…
It strikes me that I actually wouldn’t know how to engage any further with you. Hmm.
What does this mean? Am I not making it easy enough to find? I’ve never done any UX testing here, and I have no way of knowing (that I, uh, know of) whether or not people can find what they need next.
Are the links provided from the “about” page insufficient? Is this a call for some sort of easy “elsewhere” linkage?
This is an open call to whomever for feedback on the site, by the way. I mean, I want YOUR clarification, Lisa, if you can give it, but if anyone else wants to chime in, or to email me privately, I would welcome it.
I mean that I read your blog and that’s pretty much all. No, wait, I follow you on Twitter but since I’m a chatterer I have made lists, and I don’t think you followed me back which is just fine, but since you are not on my life of who I talk to and you don’t tweet a lot, I forget about it:(. I think I might need a How To Communicatrix Yourself page, one that says, in essence, “If you like what you read here, do these 3 other things to deepen your engagement.” And if I knew that, then I could try to show up at a conference if you ever came to Northern California. Or I could subscribe to your newsletter, which I don’t do since I don’t know what it says….
One data point. I took your recommendation and did Leo Babauta’s Bootcamp. I would take other recommendations on how to navigate this blogosphere/new media stuff. Because I did, as you say, come late to it.
Excellent post. Made me think about what I post on FB.
I think your comment makes me happiest of all.
Because that would make everyone’s life better, if we all just thought about what we posted to Facebook.
I rarely comment, but this post hit me. I’ve been on an unsubscribing rampage lately, but certainly not lightly. I’m trying to be focused in what I read, knowing full well that there are just way too many good things out there, and if I try to read them all I’ll have no time left for what’s really important.
Thanks for the permission to bail, but I’ll be sticking around. =)
Look at it this way: you’re already being selective and careful with your time and attention by not commenting everywhere.
I don’t always reply to every comment, but I felt like this was a good thread to do it in. Because I feel very, very strongly about this topic, and it’s my hope that other people will start to pay attention to this topic, so I put my attention—thoughtfully, deliberately—here.
The reason I have to think so much about focusing is because I am SO BAD AT IT. I’m the poster child for Shiny Object Syndrome, queen of a thousand launched & abandoned projects. It shames me and exhausts me when I think about it. So here is where I start to turn it around: with thought, then action, then deliberate documentation of the process.
So thanks for sticking around, and thanks even more for taking time to comment.
C,
I agree with you completely. Every time I go to someone’s offer, it is pages of exploding and yelling type telling how valuable the free stuff is I’m able to get by opting in. I want to rip the web page off my monitor and shred it. Every one is yelling to stand out and it’s just NOISE.
Thanks and always good to read your sh-t!
Be well and miss your face.
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