12 Filtering Tips for Better Information in Half the Time: RSS, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon

 Tim Ferriss’ blog is about to help me once again — this time, cutting out some of the “surf time” for information I use every day using RSS, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.

In a digital world, the race goes not to the person with the most information, but the person with the best combination of low-volume and high-relevancy information. The person with the least inputs necessary to maximize output.

I admit I used to use RSS, but I stopped using it as soon as I started using tabbed browsing in Safari (and now Firefox). It’s so simple to just call up all my favorite sites by “opening all tabs” that I just stopped using RSS altogether. However, I’m missing the key timesaver of RSS feeds now –the ability to only read new posts, and skim content on multiple sites simultaneously.

On to the tips, from Ryan Holiday:

Using RSS Effectively:

1) Don’t Use Categories
Organizing all your feeds by genre is tempting but will burn you out.

2) Don’t check it on the weekends

3) Clean House
If an author isn’t delivering consistently, cut them out. If they ever improve enough to be worth reading again, you’ll probably hear about it.

4) If it Piles Up, Throw it Away
Just click “Mark All As Read” and move on. If you’re utilizing Delicious and StumbleUpon correctly, both later in this article, all the important stuff will come back to you.

Stumble Upon Tips

I haven’t used StumbleUpon yet — but from these tips, I think I will:

StumbleUpon is a valuable tool as a reader or a blogger. As a reader, it allows you to hierarchically rank the Internet–thumbs up or thumbs down, Gladiator style. Based on your voting history and interests, it lets you “stumble” on to pages that you’ll like…

1) Actually Joining the Community
… your votes won’t mean anything if you haven’t voted often and voted well for other pages you actually think are worthwhile.2) Guide, but Don’t Direct
…go through your archives and make sure anything that has been submitted is in the right place. By keeping up on this, you can optimize your site for the traffic it deserves.

3) Dial in Your Interest, Let Computers Do Your Work
Every time you vote, tag, and review a story, the Stumble Upon algorithm gets to know you that much better. Start by voting in all your favorites, sites who’s feed you subscribe too, and writers you read everyday…

4) Use Only the Essentials.
…Go to “Toolbar Options?Position Options” and place it anywhere you want …  thumbs up, thumps down button– [is] everything that you need.

Del.icio.us tips

Although (IMO) stupidly named, I actually used del.icio.us for awhile as my personal bookmark aggregator (before I started using Google Browser Sync to handle the same task). When I was using delicious, seems I missed the social part a bit:

Delicious, if you use it right, not only makes your bookmarking system [highlighting good pages for later reference] portable but it hires all your friends as personal news shoppers for you. If you were looking to outsource your morning read, but didn’t want to pay those Indian MBA’s, this is how you do it.

Making your Bookmarks Del.icio.us:

1) Use the “Links for You” section
Delicious’ killer app is its ability to facilitate sharing. When friends read a story they think you’d be interested in, they tag it to you and it shows up in your account to be read at your leisure.

2) Give to Receive
While you’re doing your regular read, keep your friends in mind. If you see an article that’s relevant to a friends business, tag it “To:UserName” and it shows up in their account.

3) Mark them “To_Read”
When you see something that you know you have to read, but don’t have time for now, set up a category that delineates that you’ll go back to it. Think of it as a DVR that saves the stuff you need to watch but didn’t want to be chained to the clock for.

4) Be Simple
Use the Classic Del.icio.us buttons and nothing else. In Firefox, it puts them right next to your navigation bar, one for tagging and the other to view your bookmarks. Use as few tags as possible…  And lastly, only befriend people who provide quality material. The last thing you need is the website equivalent of chain-emails showing up in your account.

Here’s to more efficient browsing!

DO-based resolutions: DO more/less, start/stop DOing

Thinking about what I want 2008 to be like, it occurred to me that there’s some real actions I can take, or shouldn’t take, and that would be an easy way to keep it all manageable. The goal is to make the list more task/next-action oriented, and therefore easier to stick with. Here then, are a few things I’ll be doing more or less of, start or stop doing.

START DOING

1. Work out every day — starting small, then building the habit
2. Implement GTD fully — next actions, 2-minute rule, projects lists
3. Implement a 4 Hour Workweek “muse”
4. Blog regularly here

STOP DOING

1. Procrastinating

DO MORE OF

1. Reading business books
2. Eat healthy foods
3. Play with the kids
4. Go on dates with the wife
5. Visit with friends

DO LESS OF

1. Snacking on junk food
2. Surfing the web without a specific purpose
3. Taking on projects with little/no ROI

Have any others I should add, or care to weigh in on what you would DO? Let me know!