Really Slow Syndication

Reading the news is bad for you, according to this article in The Guardian. It’s not a new article and it’s not the first time I’ve seen this idea floated - there’s a similar piece over on Farnam Street.

I don’t read the news much these days, and I never really did. I guess it never interested me in the first place. Much like a gas, news seems to expand to fill the available space. Whatever is happening, the news factory will keep pumping in more news.

Most days I will flick through the homepage of a few news sites, but it’s rare that I’ll click in to any specific article. I subscribe to The Atlantic, but the articles I read there are mostly about food or happiness, rather than finding out who’s died, who’s shagged who, and who’s been indicted on criminal charges. If something important happens, I’ll probably find out about it sooner or later.

OK so I’ve unplugged from news and pretty much escaped from social media. So far, so morally superior. So why has this article stuck in my head?

Well, news isn’t the only place that I find things to read on the internet. I do still find myself reading at least half an hour’s worth of online content, for lack of a better word, each and every day.

Most of this content trickles in from an accumulation of RSS feeds that has grown up over many years. My current unread count sits at 6,883. I don’t think I’m going to be hitting inbox zero anytime soon.

I’m OK with the idea that this number isn’t zero right now. Where the psychic weight comes from is knowing that this number has been trending upwards for quite some time. Sooner or later my only option will be to declare digital bankruptcy: mark all items as read, and go back to zero.

Thankfully the app that got me into this mess is also one that can help me get out of it. I switched from Feedly to Readwise Reader a few months back. Feedly is a simple app and it works great at what it does. Where Reader shines is by pushing you to think about your workflow. Triaging your feeds is a separate activity from focused reading.

Moving things to read-it-later is great and helps you quickly whittle down the unread feed count. But then I glance at my Later tab and see I have 369 items saved for Later. That’s the items that I’ve consciously chosen to put into my system. So at this point, am I a lost cause? An irredeemable hoarder with an information addiction?

I’d like to think not. To improve upon my previous strategy that has led to too much information, I have two more strategies. Having three (increasingly complex) strategies for dealing with “how to read the Internet” is undeniably a sign that all is not well, but hey, the first step is admitting you have a problem and here is me admitting I have a problem.

The latest revelation is that read-it-later is not a queue. You don’t have to read items in the order you added them. Rather than treating this pile like a tube of Pringles, it’s more like one of those fancy chocolate selection boxes. “Ah yes, today I’m in the mood for a few articles about the climate crisis, and those articles I saved about Morning Notes”. Tomorrow I might instead decide to sample the delights of accessible web design or data pipelines. The day after that, maybe I’ll gorge on some blog posts full of productivity hacks. My goodness, the number of hours I’ve lost reading about productivity hacks.

Reading by topic has a few advantages. Reading to match your mood, perhaps unsurprisingly feels more enjoyable. It also feels less like a waste of time. Instead of wandering aimlessly through a jumbled mass of topics - all interesting, but wildly disconnected - there is a sense of coherence. Each post may be short, maybe only taking five minutes to read from top to bottom, but taken togeter they feed into a bigger picture around the subject. This kind of reading encourages me to think deeper, which is the real aim.

The other part of the strategy? Hit unsubscribe. Call it what you will - a Purge, a digital detox, or KonMari for blogs. Thankfully the huge volume of unread articles will give me a good way of sampling what should stay and what should go. For many years I have added feed after feed to my collection. Each new feed lures me in with one or two exciting posts, but for most feeds the typical post is far less interesting than those exceptional posts.

I do believe there’s genuine worth to reading blogs, but as the internet morphs into an ever-expanding content factory, we all need to be vigilant about what we open ourselves up to. FOMO is not an excuse. Read less, but read well.

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