In World of Warcraft I play a Death Knight. In the game they have things called Achievements similar to what you’d see on Xbox Live. The player completes the goal (achievement) and the achievements are public for everyone to see. This is the first time I can remember in a MMO having so much to do I don’t see an end in completing it anytime soon. Right now I’m:

• Working on Argent Tournament.
• Working towards a Netherwing Drake.
• Doing daily quests…daily.
• Working on the Explorer/Loremaster achievements.
• This week is Children’s Week.
• Just found out Dark Moon Faire started yesterday.
• Working on Sons of Hordir reputation.

There are a zillion other things to do in game that I have not begun to do. For example, while leveling to 80 I leveled so quickly (yes people, I said quickly) this happened:

I play a level 80 Death Knight and there are entire zones I have not seen:

• All the lower zones under level 55 (Death Knights start at 55).
• Obviously I missed at lot of Outlands (see the screenshot?).
• I haven’t seen all of Northrend (especially as new things are adding).

I’m definitely getting my monies worth.

With so much to do, along with balancing life and business responsibilities, one has to have the mindset everything cannot be accomplished at once.

RSS vs. Twitter

Reading Dare’s article today about how RSS readers are like email clients I couldn’t help but laugh because it is all about the person’s frame of mind.

When it comes to blogs and other casual content, this model breaks down. I really don’t need a constant nagging reminder that I haven’t read the half dozen reposts of the same tech news stories about Google, Twitter and Facebook after I’ve seen the first one. Furthermore, if I haven’t fired up my reader in a while then I don’t care to be nagged about all the stuff I missed since they are just blogs so it is OK if I never read them.

Simple solution: mark them read and continue on with your day. Better solution – unsubscribe to the feeds you never really read. Unless someone’s job revolves around RSS (for example, someone with a web site covering technology and the news he/she writes about comes via RSS) the unread items do not have to be read. Just like all tweets do not have to be read. Just like I don’t have to complete every activity in World of Warcraft. Or go to every party on Saturday night. Or keep in touch with every person I met over the years.

See the pattern? As always it boils down to freedom of choice. To get the news on Twitter as efficiently in RSS one has to either:

• Make a group to separate the “news” from friends and pray the “news” people only tweet about news.
• Keep Twitter open 24/7.

And let’s be real about the Twitter being efficient. Retweeting is the most inefficient way of spreading news. The people retweeting mean well and it is wonderful they share their finds. However, the odds of receiving the same news article multiple times on Twitter is much higher than in RSS.

Most people miss the majority of tweets they have access to and do not feel guilty if they miss the tweets – even from friends and loved ones. Add the same carefree attitude to RSS and the problem is solved.

Don’t let your frame of mind limit you.