I follow over 600 feeds. That’s 20,600 posts per month, according to my stats.
A lot of posts. And I feel completely comfortable that I’ve read all that I need to, on a consistent basis, in about the order I need to read it. I am constantly adding feeds willy-nilly to my reader, yet I’ve been able to DECREASE the the feeds that I actually see.
Nearly every post I read has some value to me at this point. The secret has been very, very few categories. For a long time I had a ton of categories in my reader. I had “real estate – best” “mortage-best” and “personal development,” and a plethora of other categories, with the theory that I could batch read when I was ready to read each one. I got very little out of Reader at that point because I was spending time reading stuff that wasn’t targeted at me, and stuff that was a good try but not great quality.
SO, I changed the way I do it. I have a total of 4 categories, and that’s it.
A List: This is the stuff that I read 100% of, first, and before I read anything else. I’ve got about 35 feeds, total in my A-List. Right now “The Art Of Manliness” is about to get demoted to my “B” List. I try to comment on as much as I can in my “A” list because I’ve decided either the content OR the people are extremely valuable. Sometimes stuff gets swapped out between the “A” list and the “B” list. Generally the “A” list has very specific information that could help me be better TODAY.
B-List: Oh, having a spot here is important. Most of the feeds I read are in the B list. I get through my b-list daily; it’s got stuff I’m interested in (like my brother’s blog), and also more of the fluff (like stuff about the Cubs). If you maintain 2-3 blogs, you’re probably going to wind up in my B list. Most of my friends personal blogs are here. The idea is to be less newsy, and more pure pleasure reading.
Newly Added: Everything goes in my newly added blog for a little while. Anything new gets dragged into this folder. I see this sorta when I have time, often on Saturday mornings or during my weekly reviews. I look at it all when I have time, and make a decision on if I’m keeping it. Generally, if I add something, I get rid of something else…and everything that gets gotten rid of goes to the….
C-List: I was tired of adding and deleting the same feeds. So I made a “C” list. This is my ghetto. Once a feed prove that it’s either (A) negative or (B) doesn’t have a lot of new and novel value to me, I throw it in my C-list to be lost for all time. Open reader, mark all C-list items as read. I don’t have to run the risk of re-adding things; i can add what I want, and if it was in my C-list it will be ‘marked as read.’ If I notice it gets rid of something in “newly added” i might take a closer look.
I’ve also made a “me” list to make sure my stuff is showing up correctly as I blog, and I can see comments, etc, as they come in. That’s kind of an exception and I just scan it all once and go from there.
Still–fewer boxes means that I’m always getting better stuff.
How are you using reader?
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Chris,
Good stuff. I like the idea, I’ll try to do that too!
Tom
Chris,
Do you tag any individual items and if so, how do you manage that?
I use Brief on Firefox as my RSS agent and it doesn’t give options to organize folders. I guess this is the limitation for Firefox Bookmarks feature and Brief has nothing to do with it.
@richard, I dump stuff into google notebook via a right click, note this. I stick it in my unprocessed things…
I use Wizz RSS, which allows folder creation as well as feed search and OPML creation. My folders are set up generally according to tech type, e.g. Email and IM, Web/Enterprise 2.0, ECM, etc. plus some “stuff”-type folders – “Big Thinkers” has Seth Godin and Robert Scoble in it, “Technogeek stuff” has Lifehacker, Engadget, Slashdot, Thinkgeek, etc., and so forth.
To *read* them, I use either Google Reader in iGoogle and just flow through the entire river or only important folders like “iPhone blogs” or I use Wizz’ sidebar that shows post title and a color-coding for read v. unread. Been working well for me for a couple years and some 500+ feeds at my peak (now around 250).
I do something similar. I just re-organized this way recently. My folders are:
1 – Read Now
2 – Read Soon
3 – No Rush
4 – Not Important
I keep up with folders 1 & 2 pretty well. Stuff in folder 4 is rarely, if ever read. Feeds in 4 should eventually just go away.
i seperate it into categories (click my name for a screenshot)
I have tried several things. First I tried organizing them by content (examples: Comics, geek news, tech, mods, etc)…I found that this didnt work well because many of the blogs I read daily fell into more than a single category.
Thanks for the idea. I am going to try yours.
I basically use my Greader thinking that any article might be interesting.
This leads me to using only one category, using my mouse-wheel a lot :).
I scroll -> check title -> Interesting -> Read, scroll -> check title -> not interesting -> Skip, etc…
But yeah, I guess I could be a little more productive by doing your way, which seems convenient enough.
I usually hate folders as it means looking at stuff asynchronously, but I guess if you only have 2-3 different folders, you can still manage to deal with it all very efficiently.
Thanks for the tip.
@DWiner
Of course, Brief supports folder organization, mark all in folder as read and such. You just have to do it by yourself with Firefox’s Bookmark Manager.
BTW I use a mixed system of topics and language and the big unsorted not so important stuff. Rather crude, but works for me.
Ok, i gave it a quick shot, but… just one thing I don’t really like and which made me initially to the good old : scroll through everything technique.
I never use the panel on the left… Hence, if I want to switch from one folder to the next, i need to open the panel, click on the folder name, close the panel, etc.
Would love being able to switch between folder in a simple click.
Yeah, I know, I’m very picky on that one, but heh, I did make the jump from Netvibes to Google Reader to get rid of all those pointless clicks :).
Doh, ok, forget about what I said, works very smoothly with a little keyboard shortcut :
gt + select folder/tag with keyboard.
I’d never really noticed that particular keyboard shortcut.
Thanks again for the mail Chris ;).
I use AideRSS (http://www.aiderss.com/) with Google Reader. From the website: “AideRSS is an intelligent assistant that saves time and keeps you on top of the latest news. We research every story and filter out the noise, allowing you to focus on what matters most.”
If you can believe it, I didn’t even know you could have folders in Reader. I’m off to check it out now.
I use folders now in Reader but they serve little to no value to me. I think I may try you idea as I’ve certainly got a select group of feeds that I keep up with everyday and others that I check when I can. Thanks for the idea.
This system sounds pretty good.
I use mail.app’s rss function, and have recently discovered smart folders, so will probably create a few to mirror something like what you describe above. Neat idea.
I categorize the feeds I have into 8 folders so I know what to expect when I read the posts. The new feeds are uncategorized, and if they’re worth it, I move them to the permanent folders and if they’re not, then I unsubscribe. I try to keep my feeds neat and clean, and right now I have only 50. I used to have almost 200.. and I can’t believe how you can live with 600 feeds!
Ive started moving away from making folders like web-design, marketing, blogging and started moving into consumption-based categorization like fast, slow, very slow, junk, inspiration
These are based on the speed at which I can consume the content
I use google reader for the blogs of all my Twitterbuds, and some random stuff I find. I use Shyftr for all of my techy, geeky stuff. There I try to organize by topics, like mac, hardware, gadgets, early adopter, social media, etc… This makes it easier for others to find feeds that interest them, which is why Shyftr was created.
Twitter @thattalldude
I guess I should start using the same system. Right now all my feeds come to the root folder and it’s kinda messy. I need to set priorities.