Feeding our reading habits

Technologist Alex Kessinger on using feed readers effectively:

Reading efficiently can mean a number of things to people, and that’s fine. Some people want to read to stay up to date, others want to cover a lot of ground while not spending too much time reading. The idea is that reading efficiently covers the whole spectrum of reading goals.

Efficiency is a formula. How much did you consume, in what amount of time, and what do you have to show for it? If you read a ton quickly, but you can’t recall what you read, then you are wasting your time. If you want to have a high recall, and thus consume a small amount of material slowly, that’s fine, but this is a balancing act. You need to decide what your goal is before you can do anything to optimize for it.

Well said. This long series of posts inspired me to shake up my RSS feed reading habits. It might be a good topic for an upcoming blog post here.