The signal-to-noise ratio is measured by comparing the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise.
A lot of people on the web, myself included, are comparing the level of desired information to the level of distractions.
How can we possibly filter out something meaningful and useful when we have so many posts, tweets, and likes?
I’ve been in a year long process of cutting back. In the past, I subscribed to everything and contributed as well.
There were personal posts and business tweets and hundreds of web feeds to consume. Since then I’ve changed my online persona, deleted my Facebook account, pared down the number of people I was following and more.
If something didn’t have value or if someone wasn’t enriching my life with their posts about what they had for dinner, it got cut.
As a photographer, I’ve even changed the way I display my images. Flickr is more for personal use, if that. Instagram? Gone.
Socially, I am on Google Plus and on Twitter. This website is my personal hub from which everything else revolves around.
Doing these things have allowed me to regain my time and be more productive. I can focus on what is important to me and not what others want to tell me is important. That’s not how the digital life works. The web is what you make it.