RSS == Really Sucky Syndrome
I don’t know about you or what other cool cats are doing nowadays, but I use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to suck in all the content from the Internet. To get specific, I use Reeder as my primary RSS application and Instapaper as my goto save-for-later bucket.
During the summer of 2016, I became obsessed with HackerNews. In the beginning, it was nice because I was reading and absorbing anything and everything interesting that was going on the Internet. I was learning something new everyday and was becoming a better developer. In addition, I was up-to-date with the latest gossips and practically heard of every “new cool language/framework/testing tool”. However, this came with a price. I was checking HackerNews about 10-15 times a day. No article went by me unread. Every single article had that faint light gray color as they went past my fingers of fury. At a certain point, it seemed like I was reading more than I was coding.
Then school started again.
What used to be a morning ritual of checking HackerNews became impossible. If I was lucky, I got to check the feed once or twice a day. Even then, I would only be able to read one or two articles and save the rest into Instapaper. And eventually, Instapaper became a place where essays and blog posts go to die and rot in a pile of their own digital waste.
RSS was even worse. I had subscribed to about 30+ RSS sources and was getting up to 60 new articles per day. After about a week into school, I didn’t even try to catch up on these. In fact, Reeder ended up losing its spot on my Dock.
I bet 5000 unread articles is some sort of new record. I also bet 5000 is the highest number of unread articles Feedly will let you have.
It’s Winter Break now and it’s about 55 degrees in Texas. I’m currently sitting at a cafe drinking a latte that is way too sweet and trying to fix the mess I have found myself in. To do this, I wrote myself a little prescription. If you are experiencing the same symptoms as I am, I recommend you do the same.
Rules of Engagement with articles from the Interweb/HackerNews
1. Read at least 5 articles from my saved Instapaper feed every day
DO NOT ADD NEW ARTICLES UNTIL THE RED BUBBLE THINGY REACHES ZERO!
2. Limit reading HackerNews to only TWICE a day
3. Only keep 4-5 most interesting subscriptions in Reeder’s RSS feed
I know there are lots of interesting articles out there but you will never get to all of them.
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