I’ve awoke to no new emails for the last three mornings. For the first two of them, I actually checked to see if my email server was working (and it was). This is the result of me basically removing all the digital information I consume.

I’ve unsubscribed from every newsletter, deleted my facebook (and all other social media accounts except twitter + instagram), removed myself from every web service/app I don’t regularly use and even unfollowed a great deal of folks on the two social media services I kept (it’s not personal, I promise).

I realized I don’t need to constantly be consuming information. There are too many good articles to read in a day, there is too much news that exists to be read and too many interesting people to hang on every word from. It’s sucking my time when I could be creating.

So I’ve made a conscious move to consume less, and create more. This isn’t stemming from ego either, as in, I don’t think that what I create holds more value than what others create. It comes from the simple desire to be more creative, regularly. To make instead of consuming. Whether or not others find value or use to what I create is secondary (being truthful it does matter if people find value in it, but that’s not a driving force).

I took a broad stroke at everything and cut it all out in a single go. But that doesn’t have to be the case. You can simply and consciously look at what you subscribe to, sign up for and/or consume digitally. Do you need it all? What if you cut out half? Could you exist with one instead of five social networks?

Think of it as an information diet. Or digital minimalism. Or don’t label it all and just pursue it as a experiment in what fills your time when you aren’t constantly consuming.