Several people are shocked to hear that I read 1000+ emails and several hundred blog posts a day. Ofcourse, when I say that, all I mean is that, I process that much content. I read around 30-40% (That is really the signal-to-noise ratio of web content these days–and that is, if you are subscribed to high quality feeds)
[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“450” caption=“google reader trends”]
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One of friends was curious how I can handle all that data flow, and I emailed her this:
- Everyday, go to bed with a zero count.
- Use tools to reduce your processing. (use email rules/filters to move mails to manageable folders and Google reader for feeds)
- Learn to skip-read. I use a 2 parse method.
- Parse through sets of items (email headers or blog post headlines), and mark the ones your need to pay attention to (usually around 40%).
- Filter based on short-listed items and then go through them in detail. In the case of blog posts, if something does retain my attention after the first 4 sentences, I skip that item.
- (only for blog posts) I mark the ones I have to comment on, and then do my commenting after I finish a folder.
- Sometimes, you just can’t squeeze everything in a day, I either bookmark or mail it to myself to be addressed over the weekend.
What do you think? Am I missing something that will make my life a little easier?
Update: Thanks to Aswinanand for pointing this out–I don’t really get 1000+ emails. I was just exaggerating (which is just another way of saying, click-baiting! :) )