Asklemmy

I subscribed to too many YouTubes. Then I tried to watch all the good videos from the YouTubes I was subscribed to.

I can sort of almost keep up? If I go and watch YouTube constantly I can clear like 6 months' backlog in 2 months. But then at the end of the 2 months I'm like, was all that stuff really any better than the new stuff that's showing up today? Or than the other stuff I would have been watching or listening to? And the answer is really no.

So I think next time I take an interest in YouTube I'm not going to try and clear the backlog. It's not like it won't be there later; if I hear of a great video, I can go and watch it. And anything that won't be there latter is deliberately designed to exclude me, so why would I want it?

Whatever you decide to participate in, you're participating in that thing. You can't actually participate in anything if you keep going around trying to participate in everything at once.

Perspective shift.

Imagine zooming out of your body, into the sky, looking down at all the people and land and everything.

You can't keep up with all that, right? But is most of it really worth much? Is a squirrel eating a nut over yonder really all that important?

Your attention is always limited in scope, but it's existing in a nearly unlimited world. So you have to manually constrain it with your own conscious decision-making. Goals are helpful in this.

Can also help to relieve the FOMO on actually genuinely important things to you by setting up a nice system that feeds you the news you want. There's lots of services.