Generally, I am against the “big reset”. My reasoning is that there are a core number of RSS feeds and social network contacts that you will likely keep at almost all times. For my RSS feeds, I tend to review my stats to see what I am reading and sharing. In some cases, I have removed popular feeds because of the signal/noise ratio in order to keep my RSS reading somewhat sane. Reviewing and pruning seems to be a good process, but it has to be continuous not once per year. Otherwise, entropy rules and you just have a lot of unread feeds with little signal.

No. And no.

Makes sense to me! Thanks for the reset to discovery explanation. I’ve been trying to do the hardfrost quarterly but my input desires go into overdrive. Makes me want to clear the slate to ensure the that meaningful information gets thru

Hello Tac! Although I generally do not like when people reset by taking their follower-following ratio to an exclusive number (I think that can easily be managed with a list, one that is private), I do love the idea of a reset, like spring cleaning! Rethinking “what” interests you. Some people may no longer fit this redesign of your new interest graphs. I do like to preserve access via DM, and this presents the conundrum in this exercise. I think the key is to preserve a diverse ecosystem that builds on weak ties. And you are absolutely right, “as social has moved mainstream, it is time to explore new groups and trends and apply my same thinking and problem solving to those areas.”

I especially love and agree with “For me, it’s all about discovery. Learning is more important than knowing.” You may like, “Innovators are learners, not experts.” here > http://screenr.com/w4F.

It is great that you are taking the time to explain your rationale, as most people would not realize that what you are doing here is deeper than it may appear. I look forward to following your experiment!

Thank you for sharing,

Angela Dunn
@blogbrevity

My new years resolution for the past 4-5 years has been “simplify”. Anything in support of this mantra gets my vote. I’ve been cleaning out my following list for awhile now, and the fewer streams and screens i’m attached to, the more peaceful my life is.

Thanks Angela. It’s not meant to be exclusionary but I know it comes off that way. It’s an unfortunate consequence of the process but it’s an important process, for me at least. Thank you for the recommendations.

Thanks Rob for the comment. I do a lot of curating and pruning probably on a daily basis but for me there’s just something about starting from scratch. Maybe I’m just not good enough at the pruning process.

Been doing that on Facebook - if it’s your birthday, and the name rings no bells, I’m wondering why you’re in my network that I’m trying to make friends and family.

So a lot of unfriending on birthdays (ironically). And, if I can’t post on your wall, it means that you don’t think of me as a good enough friend, so I unfollow that way.

It’s interesting for business, though, and will likely have to change it so I have different settings (which is what I recommend to my college kids). But for now, I’m ignoring friend requests from people I don’t know IRL, and unfriending the same.

In a past company I worked for, I knew a few managers who used a similar method to manage their email. They would go on VK for a week or two and come back to a very stuffed email inbox. So they would “nuke” the whole thing. Then, they would send out a message to the company stating that they lost all of their email and to please resend anything that was important. One manager who practiced this told me “You’d be surprised at the effect a week of idleness will have on the perceived importance of a message”.

Sounds like you are embarking on something similar. Should make for some interesting results.

I’d be interested in hearing about your findings on this bold Twitter experiment where “no Tweep has gone before”.

I love the rationale you used in the reset. Have seen others do it previously and their reasoning was…well…something I couldn’t get behind 100%. Not that that’s necessarily important. More than anything I wanted to really just say that I got to watch MegaMind on a plane recently and LOVED it Okay…that’s all

Oh my gosh. That’s brilliant. I’m so doing that when I get back from SXSW

Code: Thanks for your comment.

Yeah, I’ve been wondering how to extend this to Facebook because I have all settings wide open but theres no good way to filter the wall. There’s no Tweetdeck for Facebook. Unfollowing everyone there doesn’t make sense but I do think some aggressive pruning is in order.

[...] Hard Frost - Times 20: Which leads to the concept of the hard frost. Two to three times a year I try to purge out feeds, e-friends (sorry!), connections, e-subscriptions that are no longer as relevant to me as they were when I first engaged. Tac Anderson, as he frequently does, takes it a step further and starts over as he explains in A Total Reset and Rediscovery. [...]

[...] week ago today I chopped the head off of all of my RSS feeds and all of my Twitter followers in an attempt of sparking insights through rediscovery. It’s only been a week but it’s [...]