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I have used many RSS feed readers ever since I discovered that you could keep a tab on your friends blogs by not visiting them everyday [yeah, I used to do that]. I moved from Bloglines to Newshutch to some other desktop reader to finally Google Reader. Although RSS feed readers make it very easy to stay in touch with sporadically-updated blog, adding frequently-updated blogs can have a detrimental effect on your productivity. At one point of time when I was posting a lot on DesiPundit, I had more than 400 feeds in my reader and was adding at least a handful every week [I have 176 now]. But soon I realized that I was merely ‘reading’ most of them for the sake of marking them unread (the unread count can be quite intimidating; Google Reader merely says 100+). I have been trying to manage my RSS feeds or at least the way I read them for a while. So I was naturally interested in this video where Scoble explains how he manages 622 RSS feeds in his reader:
Skimming posts and focusing on the headline, keywords, and graphics is something that I have been doing subconsciously. But there are a few more tips that I think need to be emphasized:
- Create plenty of categories and group your feeds either according to topic or preference. I have a category called ‘First Reads’ which comprises of my favorite blogs and naturally I read before I read other blogs. This is also the list I would read after getting back online following a break.
- This may sound stupid to some but I prefer to read frequently-updated blogs such as Boing Boing, Kottke, etc. directly through the browser. This also keeps my unread count to manageable level. You don’t want to log in your RSS reader after a brief break of two days and see 1215 items unread. that just makes me feel horribly out of touch as if something monumental happened and I missed it all. Alternatively use start pages like Netvibes, iGoogle, or Yourminis to keep track of these large blogs.
- If you come back after a break of over a month, trust me you want to mark all your items as ‘Read’ and start afresh. You’ll never catch up if you sit down to read them all. Of course, you can always skim through your ‘First Reads’ category.
These are some of the personal tips that came readily to mind when I saw the Scoble video. Do you have any tips that makes your RSS feed reading more efficient? Don’t say, have only 10 feeds in your reader :)
by Patrix | on Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am | 
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May 29th, 2007 at 4:30 pm reply
I wish I could read 400 feeds! I would probably learn a lot more. I read about 15, and that’s all I can handle.
May 29th, 2007 at 4:45 pm reply
Court, that is one upside of being a graduate students…lots of flexible time. Of course, leads to procrastination as well. BTW reading more feeds doesn’t necessarily mean learning more especially if you are reading the wrong feeds. 15 powerful feeds can often tell you as much.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:13 am reply
[...] The Scoble video I linked previously mentions that he often catches up on his email when his offline usually when he is flying and doesn’t like to read feeds then. Also, I have noticed that I work best be it writing a research paper or just reading academic articles when I am offline. The temptation to check your email or browse feeds is just too much. Probably that email you just received a notification for doesn’t really demand your immediate attention but the time you take to check it disrupts your flow and chain of thought. Abhijit also asks if loading up your already-juiced-with-add-ons Firefox browsers with another plugin is worth it. [...]