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Managing my Feed Inbox
Putting aside the value that one gets from an RSS reader such as avoiding the chore of visiting each site you read the most, lately it’s been more than stated that going through that same information that one craves is not something everyone looks forward to because of the overload aspect of it. Each person has their software of choice and routine for how they handle the influx of content and while mine is not one to be held in high esteem, it’s certainly one that works and doesn’t shy me away from going through the inbox everyday.
How I read it
At work I often mention how “time is money” but one can supplement that fact by saying that time is more invaluable because you can always acquire more money but with time, you can only lengthen the illusion of it and it’s not something I will pretend I have by spending countless hours just reading feeds.
The way to do that obviously would be to simply scale down to only what is in every respect essential for me by reading those blogs that I hold high regard. I do that by only having certain feeds appear on my iPhone version of NetNewsWire and that I can read on the go while on my desktop I have everything else that I consider secondary. Simple as that. The object is to read some of them throughout the day so as to not be bombarded with all later.
If an entry resonates with me, which happens very often, I click on the “Add to Clippings” option and it bookmarks that particular post so that I can follow up on it from my desktop when I get home.
As for the structural look of feeds in my reader, I follow Pat’s 1st, 2nd and Spark configuration and it’s worked out perfectly so far:
The idea was to put only the must-reads into the 1st folder. The 2nd folder was for blogs I enjoy, but if I missed something wouldn’t be the end of the world. The last folder was for new blogs, that with time would either find themselves either in the 1st or 2nd folder, or out of my feed reader altogether.
When I read it
I have a routine of reading feeds in the evening because for the most part, everyone’s already published during the course of the day and it’s not an activity that consumes a lot of my time because I have already read most of them on my iPhone.
Ultimately we have complete control of what information we want coming to us and as a rule you should operate at a macro level and just stick with what you absolutely deem unmissable content. Of course that content is subjective and I believe I handle quite well the process of sifting the junk from the relevant with my routine while not closing out the opportunity of new sites with seemingly good outflow of ideas and opinions to be incorporated into my reader.
Needless to say that I don’t feel overwhelmed by the social web, at least not with feeds because I own their asses and not the other way around. As for Twitter streams, that’s just another story to be tackled later.
