How to rediscover joy in your News Feed

I recently removed a third of my connections on LinkedIn.

Marie Kondo is sweeping the nation (and their closets) with the resurgence of "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" in the form of a more easily consumed Netflix show and, while she might not have me throwing away my clothes yet, I have found a place to start.

Over the past year, without my really noticing, the balance of my connections has shifted from thought leaders, industry experts and close connections to SEO/Marketing/Sales EXPERTS who really want to know what I could do with 10 -15 more qualified leads per day. 

I appreciate the hustle, but my feed was just noise.

It took me multiple evenings but I went through my entire network, asking myself 4 things for each person:

1. Did I know them?
2. Were they were a good connection in my field?
3. Did they create/share interesting, thought-provoking content that made me think, made me smarter, made me better rounded?
4. Would I actually reach out to them to interact, have a conversation?

Unless I had a strong YES to at least one of those questions; I removed the connection.

I know, what if someone I removed was someone who some day I really should be connected with and could help me???

Two things.

One, if that were true, they likely would have met one of my 4 criteria.

Two, if that becomes the case, I'm sure we'll connect again down the road when its relevant for both of us.

Until then, let me share with you what I've experienced in the last 2 days of a clean network.

• Real content.
• Enriching reads.
• Exposure to new (old) people I forgot I had in my network because they were completely drowned out by the sheer volume that the rest was churning out.

This morning I woke up to a cascade of notifications of people knocking on the door to get back in: LinkedIn connection requests without an note, introduction or explanation, from people I do not know.

And instead of accepting, I wrote this; to share with you in my network (and those you chose to share it with), how I brought some order to the wilderness that was my News Feed.

Give it a try; you might be surprised how much joy it can spark.