Controlling the Flood
RSS is easily my favorite “internet technology” of the past few years. It single-handedly allows me to sift through hundreds of articles a day that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Sadly, the convenience of RSS makes it a prime candidate for abuse. Lately, I’ve made some changes to my RSS workflow, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.
First, keep your setup as simple as possible. I was a NewsFire user for years; it’s pretty, it’s intuitive, it works great, but it’s Mac-only. That was perfect when I did all my work on my PowerBook, but when I started my latest job, I moved (under duress) to Windows during the day. All of a sudden I needed a second reader, and that meant keeping my feed readers in sync. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted just figuring out which articles I had read and which ones I hadn’t. I finally gave up earlier this week and switched to Google Reader. Since I now have a single reader that’s available everywhere, my feeds are always in sync and I’ve significantly cut down the time spent in front my feeds. So my new rule is to use a single reader if at all possible.
Second, set a maximum. RSS can get out of control quickly, so I now follow Rands’ First Law of Information Management, which states:
For each new piece of information you track, there is an equally old and useless piece of information you must throw away.
To this end, I’m keeping my number of feeds at a maximum of 100 (you may max out at 20, this is a personal preference). If I want to add a new feed, I delete one that doesn’t update or that I don’t read. So far, I’ve found that this helps prune the stagnant feeds while keeping a steady flow of new content.
Third, let the losers go. It’s easy to fall prey to following sites like Digg or Gizmodo through RSS because they update roughly 100 times a day. However, if you don’t read 99% of the updates, then that feed isn’t worth following. I’ve found that it’s more rewarding to have unread items because you actually read every article than zero unread items that were never read. For that very reason, I removed both Digg and Gizmodo from my reader this week and I haven’t missed a thing.
Finally, don’t let it control you. RSS does help us weed through tons of data at a remarkable pace, but don’t become a slave to it. There’s definitely something satisfying about having zero unread items, but if I’ve learned one thing during my time with RSS, it’s this: your feeds will always update; there’s literally no end to the influx of new articles. If, at any point, you get overwhelmed by the number of unread articles, check the two or three feeds that really matter to you and simply mark the remainder as read. Stressing out about those unread articles is not only unhealthy, but it’s also ridiculous.
So if you’re the kind of person that reads dozens of sites a day, but has them bookmarked and visits them one at time, give RSS a try. I promise, you’ll thank me. And if you take away one thing from this article, please take this, my cardinal rule of RSS: subscribing to less means you’ll read more.
