Like we said a few weeks ago, RSS is a great tool for keeping up with frequently updated information sources. If you followed our NetworkEducation you even set up a Google Reader account. The problem with RSS is the absolute flood of information you can open yourself up to.
If you follow 50 blogs that post weekly, that’s 50 posts each week, so fewer than 10 a day. That’s not too hard to keep on top of. You can easily manage to read all of those posts, even if you don’t check your reader every day. But if you’ve got a site like CBC.ca in there updating you with dozens of the day’s headlines that can add up to piles and piles of posts, taunting you with their unread status.
There are a couple of good habits to develop as you become a heavier RSS user that’ll save your sanity.
Ignoring the Irrelevant
The first thing to know about managing a lot of RSS feeds is the power of the “Mark all as read” button. You are not obligated to read everything that shows up in your reader.
Making the most of your time in an RSS reader is all about efficient scanning of the headlines (which is a reason to make good descriptive headlines for your own blog posts) and seeing which things will actually be useful/interesting to you and ignoring the rest. You won’t be able to read everything so don’t feel you need to. As soon as you start to feel overwhelmed by the number of stories you haven’t read, just “Mark all as read” and they’ll start building up again at a more manageable pace.
Labelling
The best way to keep your stuff organized and make sure you see the information that’s most important to you is to sort it in some way. Google Reader gives you the option when you add an RSS subscription to add the feed to a folder. Above the right hand side of the page, where the posts are listed there are a series of buttons. One of them is “Feed settings.” When you’re adding an RSS feed you can click that button and add the feed to one of your already existing folders or to a brand new folder.
These folders are really useful, especially if you have a diverse array of feeds you follow. I sort mine into News and Baseball and Comics and Writers and Library folders. One of the things about Google Reader’s folders is that they behave more like tags or labels, since you can put a single feed into more than one folder. This means that the Comics Writers’ blogs I follow can be put into both places.
When you’re reading your news, you can read the stuff that’s most important for you right then. My reading habits mean I read my Comics and Library posts first and then if I have more time I’ll see what else is happening in the world by scanning the headlines in my News folder. Prioritize your information sources and the whole thing will be more manageable.
Combine the careful use of folders/labels/tags with judicious use of the “Mark all as read” button and you can customize your intake of useful information and won’t get overwhelmed.