I use Google Reader almost on a daily basis. I wake up in the morning, get a cup of coffee and read the news. To me, it is the newspaper of the new millennium. I fluctuate between 100 – 200 subscriptions at any given time. I go through over 400+ articles on daily basis. I thoroughly read well over half of those. I have my subscriptions tagged with “Must Read”, “Should Read”, “Would Like to Read” and “Will Read if I get Around to it.” (These are not the actual tag names, but hopefully you get the picture.)
I an average day, I will visit Google Reader five or six times, mostly to clear out the articles that I am not terribly interested in reading. What ends up happening most of the time when I am in these moods is I Star the articles I am going to read more thoroughly later. This leads to a plethora of Starred articles by the end of the week.
Saturday morning is my time to go through those articles in-depth. (These are mostly professional development type articles, so thoroughly reading and comprehending most if not all aspects of them is time-consuming.) At the end of the week, I read most of the articles, but some are left behind. They are left, not because they are unimportant, but simply for lack of time. My goal for the remainder of 2009 is to “clear” my Google Reader Starred Items.
I have spent almost four hours this morning going through my Starred Items, and have cleared over 25% of the backlog. With a wife and kids and Christmas and work and … well, you get the picture. This is my great Google Reader purge, and I am adamant about consuming every piece of information possible.
