What, Me Reader? ME working through my newly added stuff:
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Since I got a ton (15k+ ) hits from when #lifehacker, linked here, I thought I’d go through the process that I’ve been using.
Remember:
A-list: read every word, mostly actionable. Lifehacker, Cicerone, Lenderama, Bloodhoundblog, Blown Mortgage, Weblog Tools, Personal Brainding are some examples, there are 40 in this list…starting today, I will probably get it to 35 weblogs.
B-list: High quality, I want every word, not necessarily today. Lifehack (dustin wax), Awake at the Wheel are two good examples of that. Comics go here, so does the Dilbert Blog.
C-List: Optional reading, nothing new or novel or necessary, and the stuff that I’ll get elsewhere. Think Seth Godin, Personal Finance Blog, Music Blogs, most friends blogs. This is getting to be the biggest list, and I’m getting to where I don’t read it all anymore.
D- List: Deliberately Avoid. Not necessarily because of quality, but because the information will show up elsewhere. The best stuff about Google or Apple appears so many places so quickly after Google or Apple says it, why bother? Productivity hacks show up in #lifehacker. Anything political winds up here because life is too short. When I open reader, I ‘mark all as read.’ This keeps me from having duplicate subscriptions, I can subscribe, and sometimes stuff will fall out of….
Newly Added: Newly added where everything I subscribe to goes. With this system, I can subscribe to dozens of feeds, and not worry if i’ve subscribed before. If they get marked as read by d-list, that’s what happens.
What you see here is the ‘newly added,’ section of Greader. It’s the stuff that I’ve found in the next month or so. Every day on the 18th, I make a decision on that stuff…does it go into my A list for useful stuff, my B list for interesting stuff…my C list for stuff that’s purely optional, or my D list, for stuff that gets ‘marked as read,’ and that I’m deliberately avoiding.
Freelance Switch- Total A list. The content is uneven, and I intend to guest post there soon, but when it’s good, it’s a worldbeater. Has the highest high notes of any blog I’ve found this year, and is the most frequently enriching. YOU MUST SUBSRCIBE. THAT MEANS YOU, TERI. I always demote for every ad, so Athol, you lasted a long time. You’re friggin entertaining, and you were the last non-actionable blog in the “A” list.
Ink an Vellum is good writing to be sure, but I don’t see it as an every day need to read. It get’s C-listed.
Men With Pens: Tough Call. I’m going to put them in the “B” list, and also leave ‘em in newly added so I keep my eye on them. They would benefit from shorter, more infrequent posts because there’s repetition involved, and I’m repetition tolerant. I didn’t make a decision last month on them. From the b-list exits Indexed. Highly entertaining, but never necessary.
Problogger moves to the “C” list because Darren is on content repetition mode. Not that I don’t admire or can’t benefit, I want to have FEWER feeds to reed each month.
I can’t Believe I’m Still Single: makes the D list. Nothing against it, but the content is not novel, and not enriching enough to read on an iterated basis. I’m not the audience, I don’t think.
Ikeif - B list. Mostly because Keith is a good guy and a friend, and a kickass programmer. He has links, and if you’re a #programmer, you’ll want to include his links as he has some big damn ambitions for building code repositories/best practices.
Official Gmail Blog: That goes Dlist. Why? Because the content is are rebroadcast on lifehacker, so it’s in the mark as read pile
…OK, you get the gist.
Presumably Related Posts:- Fewer Folders Means You Get More Out of Reader
- Book Review: Getting Things Done by David Allen
- Your Periphrial Vision.
Agreed with your analysis. We tend to drive the message home (mostly because people need that), which makes our posts longer. We also tend to blog for pleasure, not purpose, because let’s face it - everything can be reduced to about 140 characters and still be effective.
But then again, writing is very subjective. One man’s treasure is another man’s trash - I don’t put Freelance Switch as an A list at all, and Awake at the Wheel is nice, but I skip posts more than I read them (I’m sure Jonathan does the same with mine). We’re on different levels, different lifestyles and in different niches, me and Jon, so it’s hard for either of us to be insanely interested in what each other has to say.
Anyways, fun to see how you categorize stuff, and I appreciate the link.
I skip a bunch of posts, but when JF has a good post, wow. I skip your stuff when it’s tedious.
BY THE WAY.
I wanted to ask you: is money or conventional acnkowledgement more important to most writers.
Ha! When *anyone* has a good post, wow. It doesn’t matter who it is. Sometimes people rock, sometimes people suck. We can’t all be dancing in our tap shoes every day :)
As for money or conventional acknowledgment being more important, that all depends on each person’s personal values. I don’t value money very much. To me, there are far more important things in life, such as doing the right thing, helping others and being fair. To another, that person might put money as a great importance because of their life situation or family needs.
But I have the feeling that’s not quite what you’re asking me. Clarify? I’m happy to give my views.
Chris - Thanks for the vote of confidence…and you are on my A list!!
FYI - you missed one letter in Cicerone url…it’s http://www.MortgageCicerone.com
Great stuff!!
[...] I was - and still struggle with - this idea in my RSS feeds. I need to adopt GenuineChris’s method, but I’m too busy reading my feeds to do it. [...]