Lee Lefever at Common Craft asks what’s your RSS reading strategy?  I think it’s a good question since more and more of the content I read on-line has gone to RSS.  My strategy goes like this:

I have +/-175 feeds in Bloglines categorized by the subjects I’m currently pursuing (Topical, Chicago, Economics, Media, Education, Personal Development, Knowledge Management, Information Architecture, Technical, Work, Ego Tracking, Entertainment, Design, and Cooking ). Additionally, I have an “Under Evaluation” category where I test feeds out for their value to me and see if there are any larger trends in what I’m reading.  If a bigger trend (for example, personal finance) emerges, then I create a category for those feeds. I use Bloglines because it allows me to skip the “does this work on a Mac?” issue at home and the “administrative rights” issue at work.

I read my feeds by category instead of individually, and I tend read them in the order that’s listed above. Well, read isn’t the right word exactly…I skim.  The same stories or a-listers tend to get repeated in the Web echo chamber, so I skim for the new and interesting. Like Ton, I seek patterns in the information, and “listen” to the conversations that happen on-line. If there’s something I want to read in greater depth, I’ll open a tab for it in Firefox and go back to it later.

If I really liked something I read, I keep it marked as “Keep New” in Bloglines, and forever ignore it. When I’m tired of skimming past it every day, then I create a link to the post via Furl and really forever ignore it.

Such is my strategy.

I’m going to follow Lee’s comments for a while, since I think it’ll hit upon some issues I have with colleagues who cry “information overload” when presented with RSS. Ton says there’s no such thing, just old strategies that no longer work. Maybe…I don’t know if I agree with that.

(via Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts)