Returning from a vacation largely spent offline and faced with a more restrictive Internet policy at work, I find myself having a hard time keeping up with the flood of new posts on the blogs that I follow and my widening circles on Google+. It wasn't long ago that I thought I could read everything but darn it, I think I'm about ready to surrender. There's no way I can read everything now in the few moments of web surfing that I can legitimately justify.
But I'm not going to tune out. Instead, I just need to come up with a better way to filter the flow of information. Rearranging my Google+ circles is step 1. Accepting the fact that I'm going to miss 80% the messages that people are posting unless they mention me directly is step 2. This is why I never did Facebook.
Blogs are another matter. My blogroll has grown to be quite large and needs to be organized. There are certain blogs that I definitely read more regularly than others. Yet I hate the idea of dropping anybody that is still producing cool content. I put all these bogs on my roll for a reason and that means I still want to catch up on them when I get a chance.
The solution, I think, is to promote a fixed number of blogs to a different blog roll. I think I'll do this gradually, starting with 10 and maybe working up to 25. The absolute maximum will be the number that can be displayed without hitting the "show more" link. This "Reading Now" blog roll is the stuff that I just can't miss. I expect to rotate other blogs into this list periodically, especially if somebody else starts a series of posts that really grabs my attention.
OSH Armor Reconfigured
1 hour ago
11 comments:
You are on Google+, care to share your profile for us fans to follow?
I'm Tim Ballew on Google+. I post a bit over there, though the blog is still my focus.
haha, i'v had you circled from the beginning. :)
But, yeah, I understand the information overload. I came back from vacation about a month ago and had over 5K in my feed reader. I bit the bullet and just marked all as read. I hope I didn't miss anything.
Hey Risus.
I have left a great number of blogs that I don't read, anymore. And I continue to clean out my blog roll, ever few months.
Nothing personal.
For me, I'd rather focus on a shorter list because I can get to know the bloggers, on a much smaller scale.
Besides, blogging should be a fun easy going kind of thing.
Otherwise, why blog?
That's my two cents. Hope you have a groovy rest of your day.
Cheers and Happy Eating.
I fully agree with Whisk, I have a few blogs I check nearly every day (Tim, yours is one and has been on my must read list since you came back to blogging in...2009?), the rest I check every so often or when I see an interesting subject on either your blogroll or mine.
I would gather that at most I check 4 or 5 blogs almost daily, beyond that, it is when interesting stuff crosses my path.
Dang! I must be a glutton for punishment or something. I follow 173 blogs. 99% of them gaming blogs. I don't think I could live with such a tight nit group like 4-5. Wow.
I know the feeling. Risus Monkey is among the few blogs I manage to read daily, but I've found many interesting (if time-consuming) posts through your blogroll.
While I'm also on Google+, for now, I still prefer to read and write blog posts myself rather than rely on that and Facebook's briefer and more scattered updates.
I have been building up some calibre recipes for the various blogs I read. I plug my ebook reader in when I get home at night, calibre pulls the feeds and pushes the results to my reader, I grab it when I leave in the morning and read the news on the bus on my way to work. If I feel the need to comment on something or read further I mark it in the reader and take care of it later.
Triaging this way has been working very well for me.
@Crazy GM: It's weird using people's real names, isn't it? And I "follow" a similar number of blogs. Until recently, I actually tried to stay current on most of them. It was sucking up time that I could have otherwise used for creating new content.
@Whisk: Besides, blogging should be a fun easy going kind of thing.
Amen to that!
@Matt: I do a lot of post title scanning. But right now, there are lot of post title to scan. Sorting the blogroll has already helped me focus in on stuff that I'm either most likely to use in my next game or that contain posts that I absolutely must read in a timely fashion.
@Gene: Totally agree. Google+ is more of a utility/tool than place to put my content.
@Keith: That's a cool idea. If sorting my blogroll doesn't work than I think I'll try something similar next.
You could also use your email client as a reader. Feeds would be easier to manage, your blogroll would remain unchanged, the only effort required would be resubscribing to your favourite blogs' feeds.
@Elias: Thanks for the tip. I do subscribe to a few email feeds and will probably be adding more.
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