How I cope with the Information overload!
for Sunday, 10th January, 2010 and has No Comments
We need to use our precious time effectively. With little time to be able to sit and trundle through the wealth of good information day to day via mediums like Twitter or Facebook. So I’ve decided to conduct a post explaining how i overcome this.
CATEGORIES
Before I carry on I’d like to re-iterate that this method works well for my day to day pattern and respect that it may not work well for others but I hope it can still be of some use for yourselfs in someway or another.
Filtering through new content
I tend to scan through my Twitter / Facebook messages etc rather than read the full message. I figured that I get the general idea of each message by the first 4 or 5 words or so, by which time I’ve chosen whether it’s information which applies or is of interest to me. If it is, I’ll read the message in full. If the message contains a link off to a external resource, I’ll read its first paragraph – if deemed worthy, I’ll then set a Delicious bookmark. Tagged ‘reading’. With this tag, I’ve already set up a Firefox live bookmark which links direct to my delicous.com/danielvanc/reading rss feed. Doing this will display my latest 15 entries in my browser – for me to read in a set-a-side time. (See below of how I lay out my toolbar)
As you will see I have others setup others based on the category of the resource and whether I think it’s worthy of keeping. (More on this in a min)
Scheduling Time
I generally fit in time to read by setting pin points throughout the day. Some of these include:
- During breakfast, lunch or tea
- Downtime / rest break in the day
- Setting aside an hour or more of a few eve’s per week
- While cleaning my teeth
- While having that ever so needed first coffee before starting work in the morning
Of course setting yourself in motion like this mean’s getting into / altering routine and can be a struggle for some. What worked for me is thinking to yourself, what else could I be doing while I’m doing this.
After I’ve read and absorbed a piece of content, if it’s found to be useful, I re-tag it to my Delicious account according to its relevant topic (as you would have seen from the above pic) – this helps me to refer to it for reference later.
Alternatives
Of course another popular way is using an RSS aggregator. I use NetNewsWire by NewsGator. I’ve experimented allot at how I can make this method work for me and after reading of other people’s tactics, I found popular Web Design podcaster, Paul Boag’s method most helpful. He wrote about it in Step 2 of his blog post 10 secrets to staying informed about web design. I also like how he describes good methods for filtering the content that you’ve filtered from news you’ve found. (if that makes any sense)
So that’s my way, now I’d love to hear your methods!