A few months ago, a little bit after I had started utilizing RSS feeds, I came across a post by Lee LeFever regarding his approach to RSS. Basically if he hasn’t read a post a few days after it came out, he just deletes it.
Since I had just got into subscribing to feeds, I had no idea how someone could get so far behind, but now that I am subscribed to a ton of feeds, I’m running into the same problem. There was a while where I spent at least 30-45 minutes a night just reading feeds, however, I don’t have this much time to dedicate to that everyday so I started falling behind. Unlike Lee, I feel bad just deleting everything. I have the mindset of a collector so sometimes even after reading things I have trouble deleting them. I’ve been working on this though and I think I’m ready to take a step even more extreme than just deleting posts.
Starting last night, I am re-examining my subscriptions and just deleting the ones that I feel don’t make the cut. When I started subscribing, I’d read about another blog in one subscription, go check it out and then just subscribe. I think once I get everything cleared out to just the essentials I’m going to create a second folder of subscriptions “in review”. While a feed is “in review” I can analyze whether the content of it makes me feel like I must read it frequently or if I subconciously let the posts accumulate unread. If they just pile up, I’ll delete the subscription, or if it is something I feel I must read I’ll just move it to my main subscriptions folder. If there is a subscription I have in my “must read” folder and it starts piling up then I’ll decide whether to just clear it out like Lee or if I should demote it to “review” status.
that sounds like a good plan. you seem to be spending a ridiculous amount of time with your podcasts these days.