Everyday we are bombarded with information. We get online and there are all these great websites with tons of useful information. Some of them very specific to our interest. At work we have to deal with the avalanche of email we all get everyday. There is so much thrown at us from every direction that information overload  in inevitable. It feels like we are trying to Drinking from the Firehose.  Most of us are classified as "Information Workers", which basically means we add value to information we gather and receive.

Let's face it, most people you know work behind a desk in a cubicle. It's very rare for people to work outside and have something tangible to show for their work at the end of the day. A long time ago I had to come to the conclusion that if the electricity goes out, my work simply doesn't exist. Also in software development, to stagnate is to go backwards. Technology moves fast, and that again requires a ton of new information everyday.

So how do we keep up with all this information that coming at us. Well you make the pipe smaller. That sounds good but how do we do that? Yesterday we talked about email so today lets talk about the websites. Most of these websites or blogs have RSS feeds. An RSS feed is simply the content of the website without the wrapper that can used in anyway the reader sees fit. Now we gather a list of the sites we read most often and we pull all of the data together with a RSS Reader. I personally use Google Reader. This lets me access my feeds from where ever I maybe be without having to have a RSS Reader client installed. However as we discussed yesterday we have to limit how often we access this information and how often it access us. I read about 40 sites a day through it. Not a lot by some, a terribly large amount to others. Either way if the reader is open all day long it will take all our attention just like email would.

I personally try to only check it twice a day. I find skimming through the Feeds in the morning while I drink my cup of coffee is a great way to ease into the day. Then in the afternoon, around 2 or 3 when my focus seems to wain I take skim through whatever was updated. So lets talk about skimming for a minute.To steal a phrase from Stanley Spadowski's Funhouse, I'm trying to find the marble in the oatmeal this is what skimming does for me. I find the three or four post a day that really interest me and I find relavent. There is some really great content out there in internet land the secret is make sure you're drinking from the garden hose, and not the firehose.

Happy Hunting