Ironic that Seth Godin ran this post right after my rant on some Social Media being Toxic to Productivity:
The value of breaking news (news = whatever is new to you) is dramatically overrated, and the cost of keeping up with what someone else thinks is urgent is just too high.
This is akin to what we’re dealing with on some Social Media: it jacks itself so high in your attention hierarchy with game dynamics, fun, and faux importance that it crowds out the truly significant things you should be doing.