Tuesday, August 18, 2009
RSS - tool or time waster?
Have just signed up to Google Reader only to discover that I had already signed up months ago and completely forgotten about it. I now have 836 unread items! Have a vague recollection of overzealously subscribing to a whole lot of business information feeds thinking it would be a good way of keeping up with info relevant to my work. Seemed a good idea in theory but the reality was that I never went back to it, probably because I have a mountain of stuff coming at me from other sources that I just don't have the time or inclination to add more. Information overload is something which really concerns me at the moment so I wonder if a newsreader would be yet another thing to have to check, like email. Or do I just need to subscribe to more interesting feeds? I think what I'll do is try having a smaller number of feeds with content that I really want to read. This should then save me the time of checking each one individually for updates. We'll see... So what do you think - RSS, a time-saving tool or enemy of the low-information diet?
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Good question, Catherine. I have quite a few feeds set up for us in Insite so I know the "overwhelmed" feeling. It has been interesting to try out different things though. I've put up with lots of volume for a while so that I can assess which ones are really of interest. We certainly have to be good at scanning and deleting in this day and age!
ReplyDeleteBTW, I have blog envy. I've been struggling to find the right look for my blog. I love the style of yours - so elegant, whereas mine is clunky. I might have to explore some more.
Thanks Helen. I think you're right about scanning being an important skill to have. I am someone who loves details so I have a bad habit of wanting to read everything in detail which just becomes a burden. I have been trying to spend less time reading email recently with some success so perhaps I need to employ the same principles with RSS.
ReplyDeleteActually I'm finding that arranging my subscriptions into folders is really helping me to feel more organised and less overwhelmed.
ReplyDeleteI am only just up to this module now, I already get updates on my blog to the blogs I follow so don't really see the point, it just seems to me like one more place to check for information I don't really need, I have to agree information overload.
ReplyDelete