What’s in Your Reader?
Jan 21st, 08 | 9 remarks
Regardless of your favorite reader, if you obsess with “keeping up”, you probably have more feeds than you could ever hope to read. It occurred to me the other day after seeing Brian’s post about his daily reads, that I have too much clutter in my digital life.
Too many email accounts to manage, podcasts to follow and feeds to track. In fact I quit opening Reader a few weeks ago just to avoid being overwhelmed. Now you might say there’s nothing wrong with those feeds sitting there forever unread, or that I could just delete them - but I beg to differ. I get hyper-focused on the need to read them because they’re there. Suddenly it was clear - if someone could single out only 5 sites they would surely read every day, then I should reevaluate my own tracking habits.
I decided I’m not Robert Scoble (it’s a shocker, I know). I cannot possibly monitor all those feeds! So I did some clean-up today and dumped (cringe) a bunch of them. Not that they weren’t worthy or valuable by any means, but I needed to narrow my field of vision. Starting with a list of 79 subscriptions, I’ve now pared it down to 32.
Some that made the cut…
A few new I couldn’t resist…
Usually when I get on a cleaning kick there’s no happy medium. I clean out everything. This time was no exception. So I moved on to my Podcasts and scrapped a few (now 9 down from 15). Whew, mission complete.
I realize I’ll probably still never have time to keep up with everything, but I feel better. :)
oh no, now I have added more to my list. thanks for the great links. hope your cuts help you find more time in your day.
Jan 21, 08 | 11:33 amUgh, yes, you’re right, time to cut away all that excess. It makes me sad and I feel really bad about cutting these feeds, but many of them I’m only mildly interested in if I have time, and it’s better to just go visit the sites directly when I feel like reading about the topics. I’m hoping since I made your prestigious blogroll that I made the final cuts too? Nooo… I shouldn’t ask you stuff like that! You’re still my friend even if you cut my feed ;)
Jan 21, 08 | 4:07 pm@Marsha - you’re welcome, glad to see you stop by.
Lauren - no way did I ditch your feed! I have space reserved in my reader for friends. :) I felt a little guilty about some of the cuts just like you, but some of them I hadn’t read in a long time so it had to be done!
Jan 22, 08 | 1:38 pmATM I have about 50+ RSS subscriptions. I’m slowly cutting out unecessary feeds as I go but I think that once I am done, I’ll be down to about 40.
Jan 22, 08 | 7:23 pmI know what you mean about clutter, and it is really difficult paring that down. Thanks for the links though
Jan 23, 08 | 9:34 pmI recently had a purge too! It gets ridiculous when you leave your reader for a day or two and then the next thing you know 400 unread articles are waiting for you.
I could only cut down to 42. I need to be more ruthless!
Jan 24, 08 | 1:57 pm[...] en Design Adaptations tuvieron el mismo problema, hicieron una limpieza de su su lector de feeds para pasar de 79 suscripciones a sólo 32. Para mi [...]
Jan 25, 08 | 2:28 pmSounds like 40-something is the magic number. :) It’s hard making cuts but I resolved to just visit those sites on occasion instead. I’m like you Aaron, I can’t stand to see so many unread articles in my Reader!
Jan 26, 08 | 11:38 amI also have about 40 design related subscriptions in my Google Reader, but if I had to cut the number down to only one feed, that would be a feed from Ffffound.
Jan 31, 08 | 7:39 amCan’t live without this source of everyday inspiration.