Are you becoming a slave to your RSS reader?
March 7th, 2005John writes about RSS overload:
“[E]veryday I’m subscribing to new feeds (not just blogs and social bookmarks) and making search feeds…besides the overload I’m also experiencing a lots of duplication. RSS readers organise information coming in much better than email, and the subscription and reading process is much more convenient and efficient, but the problem still lies in time to read everything.”
He cites resources that may help in alleviating the “problem”. I put problem in quotes because I still feel that information overload is a myth, in that it doesn’t truly exist. Here’s my theory. Reading content depends on the time factor. Some people have 10 minutes a day, some have 3 hours. Some decide that they want to take work home, others are set against not doing that. It all depends on the life that you are lead, not the amount of content in your aggregator. For example, I have a lot of time in the evening to read from my aggregator. I read 400+ feeds and it usually takes me about 2 hours to get through it all. I then spend 1 and a half hours writing to my blog (if I don’t have other work to do - articles, getting ready for workshops, etc). I have the time so I can subscribe to 400+ feeds. If I didn’t have the time, I wouldn’t. It’s that easy. The reason why I consider information overload a myth is because the person has the power to change the amount of content to read. No one is forcing you to read anything. It’s a choice. No one is forcing me to subscribe to 400+ feeds. It’s a choice. If you feel overwhelmed with information, then purge. You will find that your “information anxiety” decreases dramatically. If you have 15 minutes to read content, subscribe to 15 minutes worth of reading and if you find that you have more time, subscribe to more.
“In the end I feel machines can only do so much in organising, filtering, de-duping, and recommending information…you can’t know everything (unless you don’t sleep). We come to a stage when we have to be selective with our information…what’s the ROI, ie. how much of what I track will I blog or clip….if certain feeds are not contributing to ideas or content to your blog or clipping account, then we must let go of them. The next question is what about the feeds that only offer a good post once every couple of weeks…
John nails it by talking about ROI and purging. If something isn’t working for you (and make sure that your feeds WORKS for you, not vice-versa) then get rid of it. For feeds that offer a good post every few weeks, keep it. You know which feeds aren’t working for you. It’s a feeling, not a science. If you are willing (and have the time) to skim over the junk for that “ah hah” post, then it’s worth it. That said, it all comes down to time. Correlate the amount of time you want to spend in front of your aggregator with the amount of feeds you read.
And as far as aggregators getting smarter, I haven’t seen one work as well as the human brain. I’m willing to test out any aggregator that purports to know what is important to me based on my “readng habits”, but they won’t beat my own brain. At least, not yet.