Cut down on needless information and filtering time with RSS Feeds.

Regardless of who you are or what you do, you likely find yourself the victim of information overload virtually every time you turn on the computer. Be it by choice or by necessity, the amount of information our brains are forced to process on a given day is just incredible. Luckily, there’s a solution that can help you get your fill of the information you want to have, without sifting through the piles of information that you don’t want.

It’s called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), and it’s been around for a long time now. Unfortunately, many people still aren’t familiar with what RSS actually is, or how to make use of it in daily life. Let’s start with how to best make use of the technology – depending on what your needs are.

1. For News.
   Don’t want to hear about Lindsey Lohan’s latest escapades, but want to keep up with the business trends as they are updated? Have no fear, simply select the “Business” RSS feed, and leave the “Entertainment” one by the wayside. Most major news outlets break their feeds into well segmented groups, allowing you to get very specific in the type of information you see. For an example, here’s the Fox News RSS page. Typically, you will find the RSS link page at the bottom of your news site of choice. If in doubt, do a search for “RSS” (control + F on a PC, command + F on a mac) on their web site.
2. For Work.
   RSS is great for getting the news you want quickly, but it can also save you time in the work environment. Why spend an hour (or three) a week checking your competitor’s blogs, press releases and web site every week when almost all of this is automatically published – and handed to you, from their web site? Get it all as it comes in, direct to your browser or RSS feeder of choice, without having to go searching for new information.
3. For Business.
   Notice the distinction here. That’s because not all business is work (reading an Entrepreneur magazine article may be business, but rarely is it immediatey relevant to your work), but both are important. Even if you love reading, you probably still have a stack of new and almost new magazines that you have yet to read through sitting on your “to do” pile. Prevent them from becoming a chore by choosing only the articles and information that you typically want to read from each magazine, and have those delivered to you with an RSS feed. For example, if you don’t want to read every article in Fast Company, you can simply sign up for their “Big Idea of the day” feed. Ditto Inc, Entrepreneur, and so on.
4. For Fun.
   Want to keep up with your football or baseball team of choice, but don’t want to waste time sifting through news about the other teams? Have no fear, almost all major sports teams offer an RSS feed directly from their web site. Even better, many teams also offer podcast video and/or audio downloads of the latest practices, updates on players and pre-game action. Don’t like sports? Keep up with your favorite blogs in a heartbeat by subscribing to their RSS feed (here’s mine). Ditto sites like Macrumors and PC World for the computer people. To satiate the scientist in you, check out Scientific American, which does an excellent job of segmenting articles into categories from Physics to Technology to Space. Ditto Popular Mechanics and Popular Science.

Now you know how RSS will help to reduce the amount of needless information you see, and that’s great. But, you likely have no idea how to execute it. That’s okay. It wouldn’t be called “really simple” if it was terribly difficult for the end user to keep track of, now would it?

There are several options, but the best is probably Google’s Reader. It’s simple to set up, and you can keep up with your feeds no matter where you are, just by logging in. Even better, with an optional plug-in (click “offline” in the top-right hand menu once you’ve created your Google ID and logged in), you can download up to 2,000 of the latest articles to come in to your feed. Talk about something to do on your next plane ride.

Update:

Being an avid iPhone user, I experimented with several of the RSS feed readers out for the phone. This let me to NetNewsWire, a great (free) little program that allows you to follow up on RSS feeds on your computer (called FeedDemon on Windows) and your phone. If you read an article on one, it is immediately marked as read on both, saving time on needless overlap. Give it a try for the iPhone, for your Mac, or for your PC.

Making the most of your feeds.

Having only the information you want to read filtered for you is great, but it’s all but useless if you spend half of your day reading them. Instead, plan a time every day, week, or whatever time period suits your schedule and desires to read through these articles. If you find one feed to be of little use, REMOVE IT. There’s nothing worse than creating more time by keeping items that you don’t want or need on there.

Conversely, if you find one feed to be particularly helpful, move it to the top of the list for the times that you only have a few spare minutes to read. If you’ve done your feed setup well, you’re already eliminating the 80% of information you don’t want for the 20% that you do, and this will help you to again place the 20% of the already important information at the top of your reading list.

If you happen to miss a week of feed data, don’t waste hours reading through it all. If you must, browse through the top one or two feeds, then mark the rest as “read.” Remember, the whole point of this is to remove clutter and needless time spent reading, and if you’re faced with a long list of lingering items, you’ll find nothing but headaches (and isn’t that what you’re trying to avoid?) by going through them.

In the information-overload world we live in, it’s not the sheer amount – but the quality of the information we have access to that gives us an edge.

Tags: Productivity, RSS, Saving Time

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Life Improvement, Productivity, Saving Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.