David’s Media Diet

The following are stats derived from using RescueTime.

After tracking my media habits for the past week, what I found most striking is not the media that I consumed by what I didn’t consume. This is most striking in terms of format – almost no media was in formats that existed before the web. The one exception, was NPR which I listened to for 10 minutes on a car radio. The books, I read were in PDF format rather than paper. The videos I watched were seen online rather than on a television. If meetings and lectures count as Media they were the one traditional format that took up significant time.

I was surprised how little time was spent on news. I expected Google News to rank higher than it did. I now realize that I would simply glance at Google News a few times a day, never spending more than a few minutes there.

In terms of the Media where I do spend time, Gmail was by far the site I used the most, This was to be expected since I use gmail as a task manager through the ActiveInbox browser add-on. Thus the time spent on gmail includes task management activities in addition to traditional email.

In terms of applications, the gnome-terminal (Linux command shell) was where I spent the most time. During the past week, I spent considerable time accessing remote machines through ssh.

Shopping sites such as amazon.com and slickdeals.net also ranked highly. In the past, deal sites such as Slickdeals.net have been a time consuming and expensive addiction for me. Perhaps, because of my backgrounds in economics and security getting great bargain is immensely satisfying — even if it’s for something I don’t really need. Thus I’m relieved to have spent less than 2 hours shopping there.

 

Chart of sites:

Chart of Sites
Chart of categories


 

 

1 thought on “David’s Media Diet

  1. Interesting findings, David. I’m experienced similar struggles of deal sites turning into their own distraction, rather than actually saving me money and time as promised. Face to face communication appears to be the one analog holdout here, but maybe Google Glass will change that, too?

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