I have 228 feeds in NetNewsWire. I’m guessing that’s a fairly typical count. It ends up being about 30-60 new news items a day. I noticed I was reading my news in what may be a unique way and thought I’d share:

1. Turn off auto-refresh. I tell NNW when I’m ready for news.
2. Every morning I set aside 20 minutes, open NNW and fetch all.
3. During those 20 minutes I look at all the new entries and answer a question: Do I want to read or think about this more?
   1. Yes? I open the article in a new tab in NNW, in the background.
   2. No? I move on.
4. After each entry has been processed I move on with my day.
5. Throughout the day I come back and read through the tabs casually. When I’m done reading a tab, I close it.
6. Next morning I rinse and repeat.

NNW Zero: I think it’s important for me to always close all my tabs before the end of the day. I used to leave some open thinking they were important and I’d like to deal with them more later. I never do. If it’s really important, I write it down in my todo list.

Use Folders: A while back I grouped my feeds into folders. Some examples are: cocoa devs, apple, photos, life, design, … When I click on a folder to process the contents, the amount of attention I give to the contents varies from folder to folder. I’ve figured out which folders are more important to me and know which can be given less attention. I feel like this helps me process the incoming items even faster.

Feel free to leave your own tips in the comments (or links to your tips).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Other, Personal. 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.