Dealing with information overload
Posted: April 6, 2008 Filed under: Blogging, Reflections | Tags: information, rss, tips, trick 2 Comments »This morning I tried to catch up with my RSS feeds, my daily review of which fell apart during a particularly hectic week at work. It took me an hour to scan about 200 posts from the blogs and rss feeds that I’ve categorized as “new media” in Google Reader. That included reading in full those items that particularly caught my attention and visiting links that compelled me.
Now my rss reader tells me I only have 231 unread items. But what have I gotten for my effort besides that smaller number? A headache, and the feeling that I’ve been cramming for tests in about five different subjects the day before the exams. I’d have a hard time articulating just what I’ve “learned,” but I know it covered topics such as video production, the dire straits of the newspaper industry, citizen journalism, online April Fools gags, online publishing trends and several conferences related to this kind of stuff.
I would love to read a tutorial that goes beyond an explanation of using rss, such as embedded in my previous post about Common Craft, and learn expert blog readers’ tips for managing all this information and putting it to use. I think I saw one on a feed a few weeks ago, but, befitting my problem, I’m not sure where it went.
I love that there’s so many ideas and so much information bouncing around on the Internet. I just don’t want to use all of my free time trying to stay up with it. If you’ve got a suggestion, please leave it below.
I recently had the same question for a co-worker. She suggested organizing my feeds into three categories: Feeds I must read; Feeds I’d like to read; and Feeds I might never read (but I have anyway). I haven’t put it into practice yet, but the logic makes sense. My problem will be finding the willpower to delete the things I don’t need to read without reading them when I find myself way behind. But I suppose before RSS I might never have seen or checked any of those in the third category.
That’s a good idea. Especially since my RSS reader allows me to put feeds into separate folders, so I wouldn’t have to completely destroy the categories I have now. Thanks!