I meant to post this a while ago, but my friend Jeff from high school started a blog: American Catharsis. It’s an outlet for his creative writing and poetry, and it’s quite good (though I’m a bit behind, as I’ve starred several items for reading later).

The one problem I have with poetry and creative writing blogs is that they end up getting mixed in with all the blogs that I skim, so I have to either switch reading styles or star them for later reading. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it makes me wonder if I should compartmentalize them in some better way.

In Google Reader, I use the starred items as a repository of things that are either “to blog about” or “to read”. When I go back through these, I often end up deciding that I’m no longer interested, but things piled up in there for quite a while. Tonight I went through all of them, removing hundreds of items, leaving a manageable 37 on my to-do list. It would be nice to have that cleared out for the new year…

I need some sleep.

I’m subscribed to about 100 feeds in Google Reader, and probably about half of them update on a regular basis. 30 of them average at least a post per day, with the highest posting rate averaging 45 posts per day. I average 177 posts read per day.

Some people certainly read more than this, but this is enough to require a system for reading, so here’s my method for reading with Google Reader:

1. USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS! Press the ‘?’ key when you’re in reader to get a list. If you’re not using the J button or the space bar, you’re going to be wasting time. Shortcuts I use:
   • space – next item or page down (it’s rather smart!)
   • j – next item
   • k – previous item
   • s – star current item
   • shift + s – share current item
2. If something needs to be revisited for any reason, star it. Reasons for revisiting:
   • It’s more text than I feel like reading now
   • It’s a video and I don’t have headphones or a fast enough connection now
   • I want to write a blog post about it later (probably the most common reason for a star)

   I star about 1% of posts I read.

3. Share items I find interesting or funny, but I don’t have much to say about. I don’t have a strict methodology for what to share vs. blog about, but I tend to blog about things I find more important or if I have some sort of comment.
4. Skim like crazy, learn which blogs are worth reading more carefully and which ones are usually skippable. This isn’t really an insight of any sort, but it’s important.
5. When you run out of new items (as I do almost every day), start working backwards through your starred items (new -> old). Always handle the top one before moving on to the ones below it.

Going back to the starred items later has two important effects for me: First, I often decide upon the second review that the item isn’t worth writing about. Second, when I get overwhelmed, the backlog gets tackled in reverse-order. The backlog is currently quite large, so expect some modest time travel soon.