A Three-Dimensional Approach to Organizing Your Feeds Using Google Reader

I’m constantly optimizing how I do things, and nowhere is this more
important to me than with my
feed reader
>. I happen to use (and highly recommend)
Google Reader
>, and what follows is a multi-tiered approach to classifying and reading
your feeds using an often ignored feature of the application.

The Problem

The fundamental problem is input management. Most of us simply have too many
feeds to read in a single sitting. How can we be sure we’re reading the
right content at the right time? Are we reading too much? Too little? The
goal is to avoid the anti-GTD
>
state of not being sure – a state that consumes valuable brain
resources and keeps you from functioning at your best.

That’s what this system helps you do: it lets you instantly choose which
feeds to read at any given time – allowing you to feel fully satisfied when
you’re done with a session.

The System

The first thing we’re going to do is make three categories of tags/labels
within Google Reader (think folders for old-schoolers). These are:

1. Priority

2. Subject

3. Location

Mine look like this:

• Priority (general importance): Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

• Subject (classical organization): Security, Programming, Design,
  Humor

• Location (contextual consideration): Industry News, Important
  World Events, etc.

This breakdown gives us three choices for how to attack feeds. You can go by
a general ranking of importance of the feed (priority), by the specific type
of content that you want to read at a given moment (subject), or based on
where you are (location).

So if you’re at work during regular hours you can read your “work” feeds,
which include important information pertaining to your profession, key world
events, and perhaps some other tidbits that may be useful during
work-related conversation. And during lunch you can read your “lunch” feeds,
which include your feeds that are still work appropriate during lunch but
perhaps aren’t completely work related, e.g.
Dilbert
>,
XKCD
>,
Reddit
>, etc.

The key to the whole system is that each individual feed can have
multiple tags assigned to it. This feature is there for a reason.

Get a weekly breakdown of what’s happening in security and tech—and why it matters.

What this allows us to do is put our feeds in all three categories
simultaneously. This gives us the simplicity of knowing what to read at any
given moment, but at the same time it links all three categories together.
So if you read
TechCrunch
>
from one view it gets marked as read in the others as well.

Examples

Let’s take
my Information Security News feed
>. It’s a
Yahoo! Pipe
>
I built that combines news from around the industry, removes duplicates,
etc. It’s a fast way to get the top stories I’d find in my “security-news”
tag that contains multiple individual feeds.

For my infosec pipe feed I have the following tags applied in the three
dimensions (PSL):

• Primary (priority)

• Security-News (subject)

• Work (location)

The trick is that I can decide to read from any one of those categories and
I’ll still cover this very important aggregation feed. But if you take my
Design Observer
>
feed it’s more likely to break down like this:

• Tertiary

• Design

• (no location because it defaults to home)

Assigning the multiple tags makes it possible to cover the same content
during various types of reading sessions – whether you browsed based on time
available, where you were, or a particular interest such as design or
programming.

This system helps me greatly in getting through my feeds with less stress
and allows me to feel confident that I’ve read precisely what I should have
during my session. I hope you find it useful as well.: