RSSRSS Reader Zero
Put together on May 28, 2008 9:14 pm by Dimitris
2 Comments
Despite the fact that I haven’t updated for a bit I’ve been following the recent developments and among other things I got around to watching the famous Merlin Mann Inbox Zero talk. Now, it’s all inspiring (despite it being based on common sense) and MM’s a great speaker but, to be honest, it wasn’t that relevant to me. The reason is simple and it’s that I’m not receiving a ton of email like I guess he does.
I am receiving a ton of news items though – in Google Reader. Finding a way to ‘process’ them efficiently would be ideal and it is in that front that MM’s talk helped me improve my practices in using RSS feeds. So, in his steps, here is my “Reader Zero” version.
(As a sidenote, maybe it’s only natural that those of us who live in the physical borders of the digital world – cf Greece – don’t have that much of an email problem: we haven’t got that many real-life acquaintances to bombard us with correspondence – hence we rely on RSS feeds.)
Anyway, I do this in a two-stage method. First, I devote a few seconds per feed to decide if this item will be useful to me or a friend or acquaintance of mine. If not, I simply mark it as read, ignore it and move on. If I do see some use in it, I star/mark it for future reference. This step can easily be done with minimum concentration and even while on the road. Or from my puny internet-enabled mobile screen as is the case these days I spend at the border.
The second stage involves requires more attention and finding a large-ish chunk of time at my desk to process the items which have been starred – I actually know for sure they are of some use. I go through all the starred items and select one of the following:
- Forward (or ‘delegate’ as Merlin Mann would put it) to someone who I think might be interested in it. This might be just a friend or even someone whose blog I follow and which has written recently about that piece of news. Or that item might be really worth contributing to an online community such as digg or Twitter. It might have value as a conversation starter or simply to earn you kudos from the entire community for contributing.
- Quick write-up (see Blitz Posts on the sidebar for examples). We use Pownce embedded in terrainnova.org for such small nuggets of insight we want to enrich our blog with. Terrainnova.org is explicitly not about providing fast updates on developments (there are a million other webpages for that job). Rather, it hopes to provide an alternative point of view and, if we’re able, insightful commenting and in-depth analysis. Despite this distinction there are also those pieces of information which fall somewhere in between and where you can really contribute only one or two more sentences. In those cases, it’s better to write a quick Pownce (or Twitter – see above) post and get it away with, rather than a saggy full-blown post.
- Write it up! If I see something really interesting and inspiring that urges me to have new ideas and elaborate on its concept, I write a ‘proper’ post about it. Simple.
So that’s the main idea. Quickly sort the bulk of my feeds into ‘ignore’ and ‘action’ categories at any time during the day. Then, when you get to a more quiet time and place revisit the ‘action’ items and… do them.
(Disclaimer: of course, the most important help in managing information is to actually have a number of items that can be handled. So to get there I did the brave thing and culled my feeds to only a few over 100. And I don’t feel I’m missing out on much, really.)
tags: analysis, idea |
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Comments
2 Responses to “RSS Reader Zero”
Leave a Reply - in English Please
Dude, what do I see here? You are NOT SHARING! Mark as much as you like, send as much as you like but do share. This is the only sensible way to cut through the feed chaos and discover new things. Form your network in Google Reader ASAP :p
Thanks for the comment. Maybe it’s just me but I have always found Google Share a bit chaotic. Granted, it’s a way to discover new things – as is following links and comments in blogs you already read for example. To me it’s an additional stream (a communaly contributed feed, if you want) and from the (admittedly just 6) people who share stuff in my Reader I’ve found a similar signal-to-noise ratio as the total of my feeds, all things being equal. So, to summarise, yes, it’s a way to discover new things but not to cut through the feed chaos.
In any case, I’ll take up your advice and share – even if just to try it. The latest addition of notes definitely makes it more appealing.