I have a confession to make to you.
I love Google Reader and all of the articles that come across my feed. I would love to say that I know how to use the web app well, but that would be a lie. In fact, just recently, I did a little spring cleaning of all of the RSS articles that I starred to “read later.”
After 30 minutes and 768 unstarred posts, I have done my Spring cleaning.
The idea of Spring cleaning may have gone out the window, but I feel so much better now. Looking at all those articles, so many of them from feeds that I unsubscribed so long again and the oldest being from August 2008, I cannot help but reflect how RSS readers have changed for myself.
Before, it was simply a place to read and store articles for later use. In fact, I would actually just print off the articles that I felt would add something to my sermons and put them in a binder that was organized by category. I cannot even tell you where and when I threw that thing away.
Recently, I unsubscribed from all of the web design showcase websites that I would cruise to find inspiration for creating a new website design. I have not actually done a new website design in a year’s time, but it is hard to give up on something that you were so passionate about.
Now, I use the RSS feed for the blog, to find the latest studies, research, infographics, and creative articles to help write better things for ChurchMag (subscribe via RSS here!), my own blog, and other places that I guest post at. The transition from making my feed a storage place to simply using it in the here and now has been a complete shift in the way I think and approach life. If I cannot use it within the next 15 days, I probably will never use it and just need to let go or else I will be mentally and even creatively stuck.
So, I’m curious.
What digital Spring cleaning do you need to do, not only for your blog, but for life in general?
Mediastry says
You don’t split your feeds into: “studies”, “research”, “infographics”, and “creative articles” ?
Would help keep it clean going forward, and target them a bit 🙂 Then have a master RSS aggregate of them all for the uber-geeks who want it all.
Carl Thomas says
I have a goal of cleaning out my feed every couple days. If an article is to long to read now, and i will want to read it, I forward it to an Evernote folder titles readlater. Other than that if it is not reference quality I have had to train myself that if I don’t read it now, I won’t read it later and mark it read.