It’s now the end of day 2 of my RSS diet and I’m pleased to say that I’m not missing Google Reader and my multitude of feeds at all.
Interestingly, not only am I not missing RSS but my time spent online has also dropped. I thought that I would need to spend longer reading my chosen sites but in fact the opposite is the case. I looked at half a dozen or so sites this morning and that was it. I read a few articles on those sites but I didn’t feel as if I was missing out on news and information.
Quality not quantity I think.
I was amused to see synchronicity in full effect when I found this article at zenhabits entitled The Zen of Tech: 12 Powerful Ways to Keep Your Online Life Simple and Peaceful as it echoes the sentiment and actions I’m taking.
In particular:
Focus on the essential. It’s important to take some time to think about what’s essential to your tech work (and play). What do you really need? What gives you the most benefit for your time? What’s not so essential? What takes up a lot of time without making much of an impact?…
Do one thing at a time. I know. This is super hard when it comes to tech. Browser’s on, a dozen tabs open at once, switching between reading and email and work and IM and Twitter, we live in a multitasking world. But it doesn’t have to be this way. While there’s nothing wrong with having multiple tabs open, it can be very helpful to focus on one task at a time. Have 10 tabs open, but do one tab until you’re done, then close it and move on to the next, and so on…
Pare down your feeds. I used to have well over a hundred RSS feeds to read in a day. The need to go through them all, every day, was very stressful to me. So I eventually cut them down, one stage at a time, until I got down to 10 essential feeds…
I found the last point interesting; whilst I never found RSS “stressful” I have taken the same route although moving to reading the sites rather than their feeds. As an online customer experience expert this has the added benefit of exposure to multiple design ideas on a daily basis.
A very interesting article and well worth reading in its entirety.
So day 2 is over and at this point I don’t see myself returning to Google Reader.