Emma Cragg

I’m fascinated by the different ways we consume, interact and engage with different forms of media. Over the past few years I’ve become very aware of how I’ve adapted my own approach to suit my needs and save my sanity.

I’ve read a few posts where people have shared the what and how of their media diet and thought it would be an interesting activity (if only for me) to write my own…

Blogs

When it comes to reading blogs, RSS is my friend and I happily pay an annual fee to Feedbin. As with newsletters I try to be judicious with what I subscribe to and review the list regularly. When I do this I try to notice when I regularly stop reading and start skimming posts in a certain feed.

Here are a few blogs that keep me reading:

• The Creative Independent
• everything changes by Mandy Brown
• Anna Havron’s blog
• Sue Hetherington’s daily blog
• Weekly Musings and Random Notes by Scott Nesbitt

I also predominantly follow my micro.blog timeline via RSS (primarily on my phone). When it comes to the social aspect of micro.blog I switch to the app.

Books

For the last couple of years I’ve committed to reading only books that I already own. Before that the ‘to be read’ pile (or shelves in my case) was only growing. Now I see that I’m making a small dent. An occasional books slips through the net though — a gift, something for work or a loan from a friend or family member.

I mostly read in the mornings as I wake up with a cup of tea. I switched to this approach after I realised I couldn’t get past a few pages at bed time before nodding off.

News

I made a conscious decision to stop watching the news on TV in the run up to the Brexit referendum in 2016. I briefly went back during the early days of COVID but was soon reminded how very narrow the reporting is and how there’s so much pressure for news to be 24/7 that often we just end of watching the same features over and over. You can add to that the increasing feeling that much of what is reported as news these days is merely gossip. These things all contributed to the sense that for me watching the news does more harm than good.

My consumption of news is now filtered through other channels - often word of mouth - and then I make a conscious choice to engage with it or not.

Newsletters

I use a separate email alias to subscribe that allows me to set up a rule so anything sent to it skips my inbox and gets dumped in a ‘Newsletters’ folder so I can choose when I want to see them. Nevertheless it’s still easy for them to get out of control so I’ve recently cut my subscriptions down to what I consider the essentials ie those that I read in full every issue, including:

• Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files
• Lisa Olivera’s Human Stuff
• Mandy Brown’s A Working Letter
• Oliver Burkeman’s The Imperfectionist
• Kat Vellos’ We Should Get Together

Lately I’ve discovered that Substack newsletters have RSS feeds. I prefer to read in my feed reader so I’ve moved most (I’m keeping some essentials in my email) Substack newsletters over there.

Podcasts

Here is where the overwhelm lies. So many podcasts so little time to listen.

I prioritise sports podcasts. Why? They’re time limited. Next the list I call ‘downtime’ which includes my other interests and hobbies outside sport; film, food and books. I mostly listen when I’m exercising, on the move or in the kitchen. They’re also my go to when I’m struggling to get to sleep.

Everything else, especially work-related stuff, is building up and up and UP. Sometimes I think about declaring bankruptcy…. but the FOMO is real!

Social media

I only access Twitter via Tweetdeck on my laptop. I don’t have the app on my phone and I have Hide Feed turned on in my browser to block my timeline and all the trending topics that do nothing but raise my blood pressure if I have to visit the website for any reason. Until the API was turned off I mainly followed a few private lists via Feedbin. Since then I’ve noticed my engagement has dwindled.

The two social apps I have on my phone are Mastodon and Instagram. I check these a couple of times a day each and post occasionally.

YouTube

I’m not one of those people who spend hours browsing YouTube or following breadcrumb trails from video to video. I go with a specific purpose in mind which is usually to watch a live sporting event, a recording of a live event that I missed or an instructional ‘how to’ video. I use lists to create a queue for watching things later. Anything over 15 minutes usually gets added to the queue and I then schedule time to watch these over a lunch break.