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[Brad Blackman]

Today, I posted about my ongoing search for simplicity with managing my RSS feeds, and I posed three questions:

• 1. What's your strategy for dealing with RSS feed overload?
• 2. How often do you review your RSS feeds (if you do that sort of thing), and how long does it take you?
• 3. Finally, how do you decide when to let those feeds go?

[Jeroen Sangers]

My setup is very similar to yours. I have organized my feeds in four groups:

• 1. Essential; These are the feeds I absolutely have to read.
• 2. Interesting; These are the feeds that I try to read completely.
• 3. Bulk; Regular feeds
• 4. Triage; These are new feeds that I try out for several weeks before moving them to the other categories or deleting them

I usually read my feeds once a day during breakfast, and reserve about 30 minutes for doing so. I start with groups 1 and 2, of which I read all. Then change Google Reader to show all feeds and read until time is up. I mark the remaining feeds as read and move on. In the weekends I tend to spend some more time reading feeds and don`t set a time limit.

[Nathan Hale]

I definitely agree with you guys...a great strategy for efficient feed reading is to identify which ones are really important and place those in their own category. I've basically decided that I only want "essential" information in my feed reader, so I have just a few feeds for each of my primary categories: "Linux," "Faith," & "Productivity" with a few more in a category called "Social," where I subscribe to friends' blogs. If I'm on the lookout for "non-essential" info, then I'll just hit up websites as I feel like it (Wired if I want to browse tech, Lifehacker for random tips, etc.)

[Brad Blackman]

Well, I cleared out a bunch of feeds, and started using a Fluid app for Google Reader and themed it with Helvetireader. Now I check it about once a day instead of once a week, and it's already seemed much more manageable. It probably also helps that I got a new laptop, so sitting down at the desk to read stuff doesn't feel like as much of a chore.