Circadian Shift

Dave Pollard has come up with a list of time savers for bloggers. Much of it can be used by anyone who finds that they have way too much information to process. Among the points discussed:

• Read less. Whether you use 'push' tools (RSS feeds) or 'pull' tools (browsing your blogroll), you're probably trying to read far too much every day. How much of what you read, and see in the news, really matters?
• Read what you do read less often. I used to scan 150 blogs three times a week, and now I read a selected few twice a week, and the rest only every 14 days. One day a week (usually Saturdays, when the blogosphere is quietest) I spend an hour serendipitously scanning my beloved Salon blogs (especially new ones) and specialized online journals.
• Filter your reading. Use news filters to capture only articles on subjects that are of particular interest to you. If that still produces too much, narrow the filters until you're down to a manageable volume.
• Read faster. The key to this is focus -- it's said that our mind can process information at ten times the rate most people read, so you need to avoid distractions and mental wandering and 'read with a mission'.
• Browse faster. Learn to scan through large numbers of articles, long reports and web pages to recognize the 10-20% that is actually worth reading. Use headlines, synopses and abstracts to decide what not to read, and be critical in deciding what to read.
• Budget your time. If the time you're spending (or think you should be spending) [reading] has you stressed, maybe [it's time] to revisit the purpose, and budget time for [it], so it either becomes more important or less urgent.
• Give yourself time to think, to experience offline, and to think creatively. This is the most important time-saver of all. Don't just react to what you read and see in the news. Get away from reading and your computer and other media, take a walk, do things that stimulate your creativity

I guess I have to figure out how to make this work for myself.