I was listening to Marketing over Coffee this morning, a podcast I like which is a weekly show of  with two guys sitting in a Dunkin Donuts talking Marketing.

One guy John Wall (not the basketball player) is the consummate nice guy, and the other guy  Chris Penn I find to be head spinningly the biggest propeller head I have ever enjoyed listening to.  I really have learned a ton from them both in the past year or so. If you are interested in marketing your business online you should give the show a listen.  Recently, they did a 12 days of Christmas to encourage regular listeners to choose a nonprofit business and help them build an online strategy.  This was/is a very cool idea.  You can get some great tips from  the posts on their blog.

So as I walked in the rain this morning with my iPhone playing the show, Chris Penn was talking about his new computer and how he was moving the podcasts he listens to over from his old computer. He wanted to remove the clutter.   Instead of moving them all, he tried to remember what podcasts he listened to without looking at the list and just add those to his new computer and dump the rest.  Such a great idea.  Then they discussed doing this with email newsletters.  Basically removing the digital noise from his world.

So I followed suit like a good marketing over coffee Lemming. I removed a ton of podcasts. I removed a ton of blogs from my google reader (which I use for industry blogs) and my Bloglines reader (blogs I find interesting) In fact I may combine my two readers soon.

I went to work removing the email newsletters that I always delete but think I would like to read, but honestly never have the time.

What next?  My iPhone and the apps. I removed a ton I never use.  And the big Elephant in the room my Facebook App!  I pulled it from my phone.  After the recent evil trust deceiving Terms of Service click through thingy facebook did which released me of my privacy settings slyly really left a bad taste in my mouth.  It is also a huge time suck for me. (read my friend Tom Websters post) I love connecting with friends and family but again it is just noise that I carry around with me.

Twitter- I have met so many great folks on twitter – Made industry friendships that have turned into business and had great conversations BUT it also is so temporary and I find last year when I asked a question on twitter I got at least 10 answers or links to the answers.  I did a test recently asked three questions and got zero answers.  Yes zero.   I am not sure if that is a statement of what my followers think of me or if everyone has 3000 people they are following and if they are not looking at their twitter stream that moment they just missed my question.  So I am going to utilize Google Wave more which I love and slim down my Twitter network to those I really know or have met in person.  My first twitter handle http://www.twitter.com/mmcallen is a mess.  My second more manageable Twitter handle is http://www.twitter.com/mikemcallen is the one I will use from now on and make the changes. ( FYI-I do use tweetdeck but it is such a operating system hog when I have it open)

So I have started in on my New Years task of removing the noise. I hope it will make me more productive and creative this 2010.

Have you noticed the digital noise in your world?

How are you silencing this noise?