7Breaths

I'm finding that more and more feeds are just recycling the same information, especially "Personal Productivity" feeds. Although initially useful for someone trying to raise their productivity it all soon gets a bit repetitive. After all there is only so much you can say about the mechanics of any productivity system - yes I know I need to get my inbox to empty, write things down, do a weekly review etc. The trouble is that really we all know this stuff, it's just a matter of getting on and applying it rather reading about it.

What I am now looking for is new and original material, different ways of looking at things, ideas and thoughts to stimulate me. What I don't want is another simplistic list of "x ways to do y", all of which have been written many times before.

For the last few months I've been flagging each feed post if I feel it has had a new and significant impact on what I do / think / feel. I've been very surprised at how few have been flagged. I've now begun to purge my feeds - if the ratio of flagged to not flagged articles is low then that feed gets deleted.

Getting rid of these "low yield" feeds has certainly saved me time, and I really don't think I'm missing out on any vital information.

One problem with RSS overload is the constant checking of your feed reader to see if anything has been added. This is unproductive in 2 ways - firstly the checking of the reader and secondly reading new entries as an when they crop up. This goes against the idea of batching your actions to be more productive.


To overcome this I like to break feeds down into 2 basic classes - "Time Sensitive" and "Time Independent"

"Time Sensitive"

Feeds related to keeping up to date on the latest breaking news in our field of interest. Items you need to know about as soon as they develop.

These type of feeds require reading as soon as they are updated, so I will check these on a fairly regular basis.

"Time Independent"

Feeds from blogs that cover your areas of interest, but are not time dependent. For example Jason's blog entry on "Blocks to Productivity" - it really does not matter if I read this the minute after it was published or a week after, the information is still as relevant.

In my reader I have 2 main categories depending on how time sensitive I consider the blogs to be.

"Time Sensitive" blogs go into one - these are very few in number.

"Time Independent" blogs are put in one, and I schedule very strict time for reading these. I may not read all of them in the allotted time but this does not matter as the information will still be relevant when I do get to read it. It allows me to set a defined batch of time to deal with these blogs and process them efficiently. If I don't manage to read all the posts I don't have that anxiety that I may be missing out on something - I've already decided these blogs can be read at my leisure.

I'll be posting more on managing RSS feeds soon.