Scoble writes: "something in my life has gotta give". I can sympathize. Four blogs, two book projects, an essay, a podcast, a training class development project, a full-time job, a family I really want to spend more time with. It's easy to get yourself oversubscribed. No matter how well you fine-tune your "system", no matter how productive you manage to be, eventually you hit maximum capacity. I'm just about there myself and I have nowhere near the public profile Robert does.

I've come to know Robert pretty well (disclosure: I'm editing the book he and Shel Israel are writing for Wiley). He's a wide open, take-on-all-comers kind of guy. He makes himself completely accessible. When we were at the DEMO@15 conference, during the lunch breaks he and I were the only people working through e-mail and phone calls in the main room while everyone else was eating, networking, or just enjoying the Arizona sunshine. Please don't misunderstand - I'm not complaining - it's the way things are when you oversubscribe.

In the massive, empty ballroom that had only recently been filled with around 700 people, Robert and I had a brief conversation about overload that stuck with me. We were chatting about Getting Things Done and how a recent visit to The Red Couch by GTD master David Allen had both re-energized Robert and also increased his frustration with ever getting "In to empty".

"Marc," he said, "it doesn't matter how good I get at this GTD stuff. I never seem to get caught up. Even if I take only a minute to process each e-mail, if I'm getting more at the rate of four per minute, I'll never get dug out."

I mentioned this anecdote to David when we chatted before doing a short podcast a couple of weeks ago with mutual friend Eric Mack. He acknowledged that the math behind Robert's statement was challenging and it would be difficult for GTD alone to solve the problem. I spoke with David again briefly last Geek Saturday Night* and guess what he was doing? Yup. Processing e-mail in his Inbox.

I remember suggesting to Robert that he might need to reduce his accessibility. Or cut down on his commitments. That's what he's doing. And I applaud him for making a tough call. Sure, I'll miss his link blog. I found all sorts of interesting stuff there. As he has been for so many, Robert was my "human aggregator".

Now I'll have to rely on Technorati, Feedster, PubSub, and other tools to replace what he once provided. And I know I'll lose an indefinable something in having to do that - no matter how good the technology is. Because good as these tools are, I know they'll probably never surprise me the way Robert often did.

But I think he's making the right call.

* Geek Saturday Night is a phrase coined by Eric Mack to describe the state of affairs this post addresses. That too many of use spend too many Saturday nights online chatting over Skype, posting to our blogs, and processing our too-full Inboxes. Instead, we should be having a night out with family or friends, taking in a movie, or jut having a cup of coffee in a cafe. I'm going to work real hard at getting more of that kind of "real stuff" back into my life. As soon as I get a few of these projects complete. ;^)