Every morning I wake up around 6am. I make my coffee, check my email/Facebook/Twitter for messages and then I open my Google Reader to catch up on my RSS feeds.

I tend to spend much of the first hour of my day scanning through the hundreds of posts while I sip my coffee and tweet with my Twitter pals. Posts that catch my eye that I want to read later I open in new tabs to look at later.

I’m currently only subscribed to 155 feeds. More than many have I’m sure yet less than many others. If I neglect the Google Reader for a few days it can be a bit daunting to catch up on thousands of posts but sometimes you just have to “mark all read” and just move forward.

This morning two feeds popped up in my reader that made me think about how we use RSS. Simplify Your RSS Feeding from the folks over at Web Worker Daily suggests we cut down to 10 feeds. This might work for some but I don’t think it’s a viable option for most people. Especially those interested in social media and technology. Presumably Web Worker Daily would be among the 10 I should keep?

Over at Personal Branding Blog we find Busy is no longer a differentiator which discusses how some folks are feeling overwhelmed and stressed by the amount of feeds they “have” to read in addition to keeping up with their social networks, jobs, lives, etc.

I believe that too many people are trying to take on the new without letting go of the old. They are adding social media in the form of Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds without letting go of the hours of television watching they’ve done all their lives. Perhaps it’s time to rethink where time is best spent for the individual. For some the exchange of chain mail email jokes with their friends is the highlight of their days. For others it could be watching this week’s episode of Survivor or Deal or No Deal. Others find that connecting to people through Facebook is the best way to spend their time.

I just know it’s an individual thing. How much information do we want or need? For me, an hour or two scanning through the items in my RSS feed reader vastly outweigh the same amount of time reading my local newspaper or watching television.

Filed under: productivity, social media by Merlene