While out on a drive this weekend, Brad and I were discussing how we needed to thin down our RSS readers. So last night I went through my google reader and unsubscribed from over a hundred RSS feeds. This is something that was hard to do. Especially when you feel like you NEED to keep up with the hundreds of news items and blog updates in bloggerland. There’s nothing more shameful than hearing about something that’s been out there for a few days already. Or so I thought. The reality is that most information doesn’t have any bearing on your daily life and you don’t really need to monitor it constantly. Most often someone else will send me a mail to alert me of a topic that I’d be interested in so why do I need to monitor it? Feeling like we need to be closely watching all the information in the world is similar to the way we keep all kinds of junk in our closets “just in case” we will need it one day. While something may come in handy from time to time, the clutter is just baggage that will eventually become a burden in your life. Get a bunch of garbage bags and just throw it all out.
While an RSS feed is not something material that takes up physical space, I feel somewhat obligated to read it as I would if I paid money for a magazine subscription. It’s a psychological burden in my case. My RSS reader was getting out of hand because I couldn’t read everything that was coming in. Every time I opened it up I was reminded of all the unread items which kept increasing. Of course, most feed items are not important but you scan them anyways for fear of missing that all too important and rare item. This is different from TV where I don’t feel any pressure watch it. At any rate, this was becoming an unhealthy habit so I bit the bullet and hit unsubscribe.
The first feeds to go were all those tech news, gadget and game related feeds like slashdot, engadget, gizmodo, kotaku. Goodbye! These feeds are updated more than 20 times per day and the majority of the news is pretty much irrelevant to me. Most of the gadgets reported are not even that interesting and I’m not really into gaming anyway. Next, I unsubscribed from every major news feed. I can read all the news I need from google news so I don’t need to be monitoring any more than that. Next, any feed that’s updated more than 3 times per day regularly was unsubscribed mercilessly. The truth is any feed updated that often is just irritating no matter how good the content is. I know this goes against the “posting more in one day gets more traffic, page rank etc” practice but I just don’t want to waste that much time per day reading any one website. Next to get the axe were any feeds that haven’t been updated in more than 6 months. Obviously, these blogs are not worth following anymore. The exception are blogs of some good friends who only update their website once a year. Leaving them in my reader is less trouble than having to visit their dormant website every so often. Next were any feed where something about the blogger’s posts or opinion made me mad or was beginning to get on my nerves. I’m not referring to people with different opinions from me, I’m talking about ignorant or obnoxious people. There were a couple of these in my reader and I couldn’t remember why I added them in the first place. Finally, I went through what was left over and pared it down to 30, mostly just friends and online acquaintances and a handful of sites I have a vested interest in. And amongst these I decided that if I was not completely reading at least 50% of their posts than I would remove them. Now, everything is manageable and if I decide to add a new feed I will have to remove a current one. This is a good tip I learned from Hector.
Having said all that I’ve moved my RSS feed over to Feedburner (something I’ve been meaning to do for ages) so please re-subscribe to that feed (below). That way I can keep track of how many people are subscribing to this site.
Subscribe to Q-TARO.COM at feedburner
Yeah, I never used an RSS reader until recently, and just started using Google Reader–I found it works best for blogs that get updated daily or less frequently than that, but I quickly got annoyed with the volume when I used it for news sites (so ended up deleting them all). When there are more than 10-20 items per day for me to review, it just gets to feel like a chore, like going through my email at work. I think it’s a good rule of thumb that with anything you do, when it starts to feel more like work than fun (unless it *is* work and you need to do it to pay the rent/mortgage) then it’s time to change something.
I would think that Google Reader’s interface isn’t quite meant for handling hundreds of feeds. I haven’t checked it lately because I quickly gave up on it, so perhaps it changed, but it mainly looked like a “river of news” style of display, which is ok for a few feeds, but not if you need any organization.
I use an application SharpReader (Win) in which all my feeds are categorized neatly. For example I have all my tech news in one folder (with sub-categories), and if one day I feel that I don’t want to catch up with the tech news I’ve missed lately, I just select that category and mark it as “read”.
There’s also no delay such as what happens with Google Reader since all the feed data is actually on Google’s servers. Whenever you click on something, that generates a request.
I have about 200 feeds and I find it alright to deal with.
As for Feedburner, I think it’s crap. It makes your feeds delayed (because the contents are cached at Feedburner), and sometimes I get entries through Feedburner that always keep the “updated” status because they contain a weird character (like an apostrophe pasted from Word or something) and it’s very annoying. That bug could be my reader’s though, but still it only happens if a feed is from Feedburner.
Also, you can get all the stats that you want with decent stats software installed on your own server (theorically, I’ll admit). :)
Suguru, yeah chore is the right word. That’s exactly how I was feeling.
Patrick, Google reader worked fine for me. I prefer it to be webbased and not tied to any particular PC. I don’t find it to be that slow. Maybe I’m just used to it. One of the cool features about it is that you can share feed items that are also published as a RSS. This is particularly useful if you are consuming feeds in a news like blog. I noticed the delay in feedburner once I published this post and it didn’t show up in my reader for 15 minutes..I might have to change it back.
This entry is too long! I’m gonna have to delete q-taro’s feed ;)
If I need specific information I search for it. I don’t even know what RSS means. I guess that means I don’t need it……..
Do you shop everyday and buy magazines that cater for niche subjects that you’ve no interest in?
I’ve always accessed blogs I read via my bookmarks in Firefox, but recently the list is getting too long and alittle unwieldy, plus I have no idea of knowing if they have been updated recently. Maybe its time to get a RSS reader soon .
Like Blauereiter, I too have used RSS bookmarks in Firefox. I can make folder for tech, art, buds, etc… I need a new solution thou. G-Reader seems good. Can it monitor comments? Some of the Q-taro Nation (I should register that domain) comments are must reads.
R
Roy, if you decide to stick with Feedburner, you should look into their “MyBrand” option which they made free last week after being bought by Google
You just create a CNAME for feed.q-taro.com that points to feeds.feedburner.com and you’ll have all the power of feedburner while keeping your own domain as a front
News in general is a BFWOT. How much worker productivity is wasted because of all this RSS crap?
Thanks for making me finally get off my ass and add Feedburner!
I have to agree with Derek UK. I know what the initials stand for, but I certainly don’t need another internet thingy competing for my time.
Roy, congratulations on simplifying your life. I don’t think you’ll miss it.