The Media Fast: Update

Posted on June 4, 2007 by LJ

Summary

In a previous article I was talked about following the prescription for a media fast as described in the The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (aff). started the media fast on 26 May 2007 and wound it up on 1 June 2007.

The first three days of the media fast were very easy. I was camping with my family without electricity or access to a newsstand. The day I arrived home I was exhausted, so I merely turned on the computer to get backups run, but didn’t check my email or news.

The rest of the week has been more difficult. I expected that the biggest challenge would be the web surfing, and it has been. I considered that all blog reading would fall into this category. Even though I use my blog reading to generate ideas for my own blog (and hence it is a “work” issue), I could go for a week on my own ideas. I did end up getting sent some web sites I would have dearly liked to check out, but I dutifully bookmarked them for later examination.

All in all, with the exception of the web surfing, my behavior did not change. I don’t read daily newspapers, and my magazine subscriptions were at a minimum before. I don’t have any audio books going at the moment (although these tend to be fiction). I have not checked the local news, and I haven’t missed much.

Results

I use a Firefox add-in called Morning Coffee to automatically serve up pages for me in the morning. I have decided that I will be removing my news sites from this feed, and also removing my Google Reader.
I will set aside one hour per week to process RSS (although I will have to do some significant pruning on the feeds) and also set aside one hour per week to read the articles.
I don’t think I will give up my Sunday only newspaper, but all I read in that are the comics anyway.
I will go through my magazine subscriptions again and see if I can cut any.
I will limit surfing by using a timer, and only allow it infrequently; otherwise if I go onto the Web, it will be with a specific purpose in mind.