ONE OF THE THINGS said by Donald Miller at the Storyline conference that I attended in Portland was that “we live in a world of way too much, so we have to fight to keep our stories clean.”

Miller said this in the context of “editing the story of your life” by making sure that you have clear goals and a real sense of ways to stay focused on what is most important.  I hadn’t heard such a thought articulated like that before, and it came to my mind Monday while reading a Huffington Post article by Bianca Bosker titled “The Rise of the ‘Less Is More’ Selective Social Network.”

Bosker begins the article with an anecdote about viewing a friend’s collection of seventy photos taken over a five-hour period.  The collection was full of random images, taken at whim.  Bosker’s conclusion: “there was no attempt to weed out irrelevant images.”  And why should there be, when editing things takes time and effort, and who has time for that?  The author’s other solid observation: “we’ve been thrust into an unlikely scenario where it actually takes more effort to consume the content that’s being shared than it does to create it.”

We are, of course, a consumer culture.  We are always taking in.  And in the midst of all the taking in, we take “more than enough” as a mark of excellence and success.  Is the case the same for social media and digital interaction?

You can read the entire Bosker article here.  And, as always, you can check out Donald Miller’s blog here.

(image courtesy of wikieducator)