Keeping up with the times
Everytime you turn around there’s something new in the web to learn. Whether it be another JQuery plugin (YAJPI), a new blogging service (YABS), social networking site (YASNS) a new way to handle CSS Sprites or yet another acronym to learn (YAATL). There’s so much to do and learn about, how do we keep up?
I think most of us (the people who read this blog) keep up with the times by monitoring RSS feeds or reading books, I know that’s how I do it. But over the past few years my RSS reader has become more and more bloated. From time to time you may run through your feeds and delete the older ones, one’s that haven’t posted in a while or people who just complain about the government. But they’re all still valuable!
I try very hard to never delete an RSS feed. In fact, not too long ago I noticed that my feed menu had started to run off the page (I use Firefox to manage my RSS), so I got a bigger monitor to compensate; because you never really know where that bit of genius, that air of brilliance will come from. It could be from Eric Meyer, David Shea or from your random Swatkins blog.
I first noticed that I was neglecting my feeds when I saw 2 cycles of A List Apart and at least 10 CSS-Tricks posts/screencasts whiz past me, and that I hadn’t made a blog post in over a month (not cool with that at all). We’re all very busy at work, some more than others, but we still need to keep up with what’s happening in the industry.
Many times when I’m busy and I look at that long list of RSS feeds in front of me I just let out a :sigh: and say “I’ll just check a couple since I’m busy, and then maybe some more tomorrow when it calms down.” It had been happening a lot lately so I came to the conclusion that it’s not going to calm down, and that it’s time to get back into my old RSS groove. It’s really not that difficult to take some time out of every day for a little news reading. In fact, the ALA news days usually take the most time.
Many of us get to work, have our coffee, sit down, chat a little and before you know it, 20-30 minutes have gone by and you haven’t really “started” work yet. This is the time I use to read my news.
Not every blog/site you follow will update content on the same day. If you run through them every morning before you start your “heads-down” development/design you’ll find 1, maybe 2 sites that have made updates.
Keeping up with your RSS is really important, especially if your one of those psycho/learn everything about everything Web designer (like me 
P). I find that at least checking your feeds once a day, or even every other day can save you tons of time, energy and frustration in the long run.
But that’s just me hoping that I haven’t lost too many readers because of my month off ).
How do YOU keep up with your news?
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
« Finding Inspiration | This Week in Links – 9/4 »
|
Comments (2)
|
Leave a Reply
Meh – I’m in the same situation as you’re in. Instead of using Firefox’s native RSS subscription feature, I use Google reader. They are more “organized” (in a way) than the bookmarking feature.
I usually take a quick skim through my 50+ feeds on a regular workday (for about 10 min) before starting work. I look at the rest on weekends where I can spend as much time as it takes to get the juice out of my feeds.
The new fever reader from shaun inman was built to help with our content overload. Great App. feedafever.com