Jackson Miller

I have been using a new system for reading feeds that has made it much more manageable. I think it is kinda a GTD approach, but without some of the steps because it is a simple inbox. So here is what I am doing: I use NetNewsWire

1. Hide the sites drawer. This gives me a two-pane feed reader. The top pane is a list of unread items with columns for title, blog, and date. The bottom pane is where I read the posts.
2. I skim the list to see which items interest me. For the interesting items I:
   1. Read it if it is short enough or skim it if I have time.
   2. If it is too long to read fully and I am still interested after skimming, I flag it.
   3. If I think it is something others should see (and haven’t already) I post to my link blog right away.
   4. If it is something I want to blog about I click “post to blog” and start a draft in MarsEdit (this becomes like a new inbox or a project list)
   5. If I want to reference it later I flag it.
3. Mark all as read. (all the items that didn’t interest me just disappear)

I used to let my unread count get up in the thousands. Additionally, with the sites drawer visible I see this huge list of blogs that I feel I need to prune or visit or link to, etc. Maybe I should start pruning the list once a month as a monthly review.

Anyway, applying the idea of keeping an empty inbox and only touching items once has made it much easier for me to keep up with the feeds. Now I am not afraid to add new subscriptions to the list.