-
Website
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog -
Original page
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/28/12-filtering-tips-for-better-information-in-half-the-time-rss-delicious-and-stumbleupon/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
Best
Jose Castro-Frenzel Dallas, Tx
The purpose of over 500 trends is for trend catching. With finances ability, I will consider hiring personal assistants to filtering the informatons.
Information is power!
I used to speed read and have a list of "regulars", the stuff I just gotta know/read/skim/check out/check in/etc. I don't anymore. I drop by here and there, no RSS whatsoever. What relieved me from all of it was a realization that I get exactly what and how much I need to know, no matter what I do. Even your book... a friend mentioned it before I ever came across all the buzz. The magic of the Universe, . :-)))
Happy New Year to all! Count your blessings, drop a note at www.IamThankful.com .
Good article - one thing I liked here (and you could include in future articles) is the links to related posts at the bottom.
Adding 2 or 3 related posts at the end of every article would really help facilitate navigation and keep the cognitive ball rolling.
Thanks!
I really enjoyed this post. I must admit to being a little behind the times regarding an RSS reader and how to properly use it. I remember signing up for the Google reader about a year ago, and using it once... bet there is a bunch of junk piled up now!
Anyway, keep up the good posting... your one year anniversary for publishing your revolutionary book is coming up in April! Anything special planned?
Enjoy South America!
Erik
one more time saver tip that has helped me:
Tabbed browsing in Firefox. Set up your important bookmarks, One click and you are set. This can also help prevent time wasting web surfing.
Kudos, enjoy your surf & Turf!
Nate
Speaking of mini retirements, you should come to Utah and Ski or snowboard. We have "The best snow on earth" it is even on our liscence plates! We get a lake effect from the Great Salt Lake, which dumps 200-300 inches per year of the driest fluffiest powder you have ever seen.
Try it out some time. If you do, let me know!
Nate
SLC UTah
I’m just nitpicking. Good job on everything else :-).
###
LOL… it’s just a rule of thumb. It’s more like Murphy’s “Law” than gravity or E = MC2, for example.
Lots of "laws" or "rules" fall in this category when you think about it: the 80/20 rule, Metcalfe's Law, etc. They are approximations of a general trend or principle, but not exact in their descriptions.
Hope that helps!
Tim
Great piece. So far I use only Google Reader (GR)and delicious, and pretty much do what you say. It really saves a tremendous amount of time have feeds aggrgate to GR and the ability to use shortcuts to scan, delete, read, "star" an item, etc. etc.
I however DO use categories. But, I will sometimes read the entire list and sometimes read by each category. If i have lots of feeds, I read the more important cateories. There are certain categories that I place more importance on...such as health matters, exercise, GTD, etc.
If I have like 100 feeds or less to read, I "scan" and/or read the entire list. I love that google reader has a condensed view. All I do is scan the headlines, if I likhe a particular feed, I either expand it, "star" it, or open the feed in a new tab.
#3 Clean house, yes! Add only those feeds you really think is important and DELETE any you don't want to waste you time on. What is important? We all have only a limited amount of time.
#4. Yes. Mark all as read (aka Shift A) is very powerful indeed. Especially after you come back from a week's vacation and you have 1000 unread feeds, you are very likely to just press SHIFT A.
Like Nate said, it's even more productive if you use tabbed browsing while reading your feeds. If sometime is superimportant, I either bookmark or delicious the page, print it out (most of the time) or cut and paste the information to google notebook.
Excellent post as usual.
I think netvibes is worthy of the list - http://www.netvibes.com/static.php?show=about.
"Netvibes:
- Helps you manage your digital life and share it with your friends
- Brings all your favorite MySpace, Digg, YouTube, Gmail, Flickr, eBay, del.icio.us accounts – you name it (no, really, you can rename our entire site) – together on your own personal Netvibes page
- Share with your friends or colleague your favorite modules
- 100% customizable – no ads, no logos, no corporate control"
Great stuff.
Great post. I used to spend an hour a day reading RSS feeds. I used to take pride in knowing about every new thing on the internet before anybody else. After about two years of this, I realized most of those things don't exist anymore and it wasn't really worthwhile knowing about them.
I've now switched to organizing my feeds by how often I plan to read them (daily, weekly and whenever) - with daily feeds limited to 2 low-volume feeds and 1 high-volume feed that I scan. I now spend about 10 minutes a day reading feeds, and catch up on the rest as projects require it or as my time allows. It no longer feels like yet another to do list and that was the goal.
josephcp - thanks for the link to AideRss. I've been looking for something like this for the high-volume feeds I can't cut altogether.
Teresa
These are real people with real feelings. Think about it.
###
Hi Jason,
Please note that I'm not making fun of this person. He is overweight due to the decisions he has made, just as people are overwhelmed day-to-day because of the decisions they make. It is possible to be predisposed to becoming fat, but decisions and behavior are what make it so. I chose to uphold a societal structure where people are responsible for their decisions, not blameless.
He is not to be ridiculed, but he is fat. There is no malevolence in making an observation of the obvious.
Thanks for contributing to the conversation,
Tim
Loved the post.
At this point, I need to keep my life somewhat segmented. So I do use a few tags (Categories).
I use Me (my posts), Home, Work, Reference (stuff I may refer to later), and Sunday (to read then). It works really well for me and doesn't slow me down.
One more note: when I don't want to be distracted by the numbers changing in my Google Gadget for Reader, I change the filter to "Me". That way, I don't see the other categories.
Craig
Got your book for xmas and love it. It is affirming an project I am launching in February to break free of my albeit successful (financially) cubicle-bound life. You mention how valuable it is to contact successful people for information and inspiration. So, are you willing to speak to me for less than 5 minutes, via email or phone? I am putting together a "How To" digital download for first-time authors in a niche market. Would love to quote you or interview you for the project.
###
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the kind words! I'd love to help, but I'm currently blocking out time to focus on a few big projects and had to stop doing one-on-one advice a while back. My apologies, but I'm sure you'll figure it out :)
Good luck!
Tim
I want to thank you for introducing me to Meetup.com this year. I've made a number of wonderful new friends, whom I otherwise wouldn't have met.
Also, thanks for introducing all of us to outsourcing. I've had experiences ranging from poor to very good with the various VA's that I've tried. All in all a great learning experience.
I'm still struggling with cutting down on my daily e-mail checking, but I've learned to balance my life better.
It was great to see you on "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" the other night.
Thanks again, and Happy New Year!
Thanks for the StumbleUpon tip. I've incorporated it into my browser!
Tim, on a related note, I just placed a link - at http://www.bentleytolk.com - to your virtual book tour with Alex Mandossian.
Bentley J. Tolk
I think I may add that approach to my own posts.
Love my RSS feeds. I remember when I switched over from checking blogs to using the RSS feed and what a difference. There was quite a while where RSS was just confusing to me and I wanted nothing to do with it.
I also don't see the point of the overweight person and I was honestly wondering 'who is he?'...
Cyrus
It seems to be a very good way to save information for viewing later. I'd be interested to see if anyone has used it in combination with RSS, stumbleupon, and de.licio.us.
Thanks