I while back I was inspired by a talk that Clinton gave about maximizing developer efficiency, so I set out to find ways of improving my own efficiency. As part of that process, I ended up changing how I go about reading all the RSS feeds that I track. It's a simple approach that's worked for me for some time, so I thought it worth sharing.

In the beginning, there was categorization

Once I started using a Macbook, I ditched my NetVibes account and picked up a free copy of NetNewsWire since I no longer needed to read my feeds online. As part of this switchover, I spent a bit of time categorizing all the feeds that I had at the time. I dropped feeds into well-named buckets like "Programming" or "Contacts", etc..

While this was a very organized way of keeping track of feeds, it wasn't quite efficient when it came time to actually read them.

Then came prioritization

After spending some time analyzing my habits, I discovered that there were certain blogs that I wanted to devote more attention to and others that I could just safely skim. The thought occurred to me: why not just have 2 groups, one for reading and one for (gasp!) skimming? So, that's what I did:

As I add new feeds I can quickly drop them into the appropriate bucket, and I can also promote or demote feeds into either bucket depending on the value I derive from the content. Each day, I can focus on the important content in my "Read" list and then burn through the items I need to skim.

Great comic (about / the strip)

I don't know if Mike is still carrying hostility from an earlier event, but what a shitty interview with Robert Kalin (Etsy founder) he just did. Scoble even jokingly refers to his technique of "just slam[ming] the interviewee."

My wife pointed me to this post on some blog designs. It was no surprise that the Inspire blog showed up on that list, but this image caught my attention:

What is it? A screenshot of a blog post that references the mighty Extend blog (we're first on the list). Very cool!

I really love how Skitch allows me to quickly drop images into my blog, so I wrote up a quick tutorial:

Enjoy!

If you can make it through the undergrad program at U of Phoenix, you can tackle anything!

Cuil fail.

An interesting course of events (to me, at least):

1. Justin gets an idea about a gem he wants to write, and writes it
2. Blogs about what he's created, why, and how to use it
3. The company who created the API recognizes this and gives props

This is something that's becoming more of the norm these days as companies (and people) monitor their brands and what others are saying about them. For me, it causes me to pause and reconsider when I think that someone won't care about what I have to say - you never know who will find value in your words or knowledge.

I'm pretty terrible with the whole blogging thing, so this is my attempt to bridge the gap between the verbosity of 140 characters and a full-fledged blog post. To make this whole thing easier, I wrote my own custom blogging software - we'll see how it goes...