“Read It All” Week – I’m starting now

Jul 13, 2010 by Stephanie

: Image by HiMY SYeD / photopia via Flickr

I’m the first to admit, I’m greedy about content. I want to read everything, absorb everything, and I’m a pretty fast reader, so I don’t hesitate to add blogs to my Netvibes reader, use my Instapaper account to hold on to articles, or bookmark cool resources in Delicious. The problem is, I don’t have enough time to consume everything I’d like. So I feel like I’m constantly behind, despite a total of 60-120 minutes a day (or more) of reading via my iPhone, iPad or computer. And I hate the feeling of having reading hanging over my head – it’s enough to make me not want to add new feeds to Netvibes, even though I discover new blogs and sites every day.

So what’s a voracious reader to do? Justin Kownacki has a great suggestion: Read it all. He’s challenging his readers to read everything in their RSS readers for one week. At the end of the week, he suggests analyzing how long it took to read everything, what was worth reading, and how much you absolutely couldn’t get to. So I’m taking him up on the challenge. After I write this post I’m going to “mark all read” in my reader and start fresh, then read everything that comes in this week. Yes, I’m starting a day behind (Justin started on Monday), but I think I’ll get enough data to make my future media consumption perhaps a little less of a slippery slope.

I have four main tabs in Netvibes that contain content I do look at regularly:

General – national and local news, mainly, plus some entertainment/gossip sites: 16 feeds
Social media: 76 feeds
Knitting: 48 feeds
Parenting: 25 feeds

Of these tabs, I know that the Knitting list will need to go down and the Parenting list will need to go up, as I’m reading mom and dad blogs outside of my reader that I’ve hesitated to add. But I definitely don’t read most of the knitting blogs and that category has got to get pared down. After this week I’ll make some changes to those categories for sure, and, I’m guessing, the other two as well.

So, clean slate as of right now. It’s a pretty good feeling to mark all read and start fresh. Per Justin’s suggestion, here’s what I budget for this week (Tuesday through Sunday):

Reading news and blogs (via web, phone or iPad): 9-12 hours

Watching television (I am hooked on a few summer reality shows, plus Entourage): 3 hours (I forward through commercials, this is 4 hours of actual shows, though if I were tracking a Monday I’d have to add 2 hours for The Bachelorette. And I’m willing to admit it!)

Reading print (we do get a few weekly magazines to the house): 2 hours, mainly over breakfast and lunch

I don’t typically consume podcasts or much video online, but if I do, I’ll track it.

How’s your RSS reader looking these days? Are you joining Justin’s challenge? Leave a comment to tell us how you manage your reading list and whether it’s stressing you out.