Clean Up Your Blog Reading Habits

It suddenly struck me that reading blogs is a big old waste of time. It struck me even further that having access to all my favorite blogs via an RSS feed is an even bigger waste of time.

In a matter of 10 seconds I went from perusing my feed reader, to completely disgusted with how useless blogs are, to total annihilation of all blogs in my feed reader.

Good goddamn riddance.

I didn’t count but I’ll bet it was in the neighborhood of 50 blogs.

For the unaware, a feed reader (or RSS Feed) is a way to get keep track of all your favorite blogs and to read those blog posts in one spot rather than visiting the blog.

It sounds great, being able to read all your favorite blogs in one spot. Well, it is great if your mission is to be lazy and read blogs. If your mission is to kick some ass then a feed reader is just another obstacle getting in your way. Light that bitch on fire and burn it up.

Now, a feed reader is an excellent way to keep track of relevant data. I did leave a few blogs in my RSS Feed that are industry specific and useful. I killed all the other blogs. Most blogs are not really useful in any way.

I used to be a very big proponent of RSS feeds. I thought they were great. I have realized they are just one more way to be lazy. If a blog is good enough I will not need a reminder to go and check it every once in a while. Heck, having all your blogs in an RSS feed takes all the excitement out of it. Sure, you know the exact moment a new blog post is made. Big fucking deal. I’d rather go check it out on my time.

Another downfall of keeping an RSS feed active is that you will add substandard blogs to it. Blogs you would never go visit again will somehow end up on your feed reader and you’ll get all the new posts that you really don’t care about. If a blog isn’t good enough for you to remember it, and not need reminder via RSS, then maybe it isn’t good enough to be on your RSS feed. And if it is good enough to remember and to be on your RSS feed then it is good enough to visit the actual site to read it the way the author intended it to be read.

One big secret about blogs:

You will never learn anything on 99.99% of blogs. The authors who have something of value to teach are smart enough to sell it to you and not give it to you for free. I am in no way condemning this method, I am simply stating that learning via blogs is less than ideal.

Of course, there are some blogs who bypass this and give you phenomenal information for free. These types of blogs I will never need to add to my RSS feed in case I forget, I will always remember to check these blogs.

But, frankly, there aren’t enough ass-kicking blogs around to need to keep track of them all via RSS feeds. All the good blogs I know the name of and if I want to check for new material I’ll type that sucker up into the address box and go have a visit.

If you really want to learn something via the internet then you have two ideal avenues to do so:

1) Read books – This can and does include E-books that bloggers and other internet types write. If information is good enough to be sought after it is good enough to be sold.

2) Read relevant forums – A very excellent place to start learning an industry or trade. But remember, all the best information is sold so internet forums will never be 100% complete.

Extra method #3) Read blogs – There are some blogs that are packed full of information and kick-assness. There are a whole bunch more blogs that are pretty goddamn useless in the grand scheme. Remember the rule : Learn, Earn, or Burn.

If it doesn’t have a purpose light it on fire and burn it up. Don’t let it burn you up.

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Comments

  1. Miguel de Salvador says:

    I would like to begin to change my body I can not find information about the exercises in spanish I m Miguel from Madrid, Spain.

    Can you help in that.

    Thanks in advance

    Miguel

  2. I heard the same argument about email a while back too. The problem isn’t the rss reader, it is the user with his habit of letting technology dictate to him what he should do. I use an rss reader, and like my email client, I go to it when I want my blog updates, I do not allow my reader to interrupt me. Some blogs I read right when they come out, some I just scan titles, choosing to only read certain ones, others sit unread until I have a block of time, and the rest get marked as read.

  3. I completely agree. I’d also add social media to the unneeded distractions. Youtube, twitter, facebook and the like are nothing but huge wastes of time. TV Shows as well. Other than instruction manuals and educational textbooks, I don’t read books. Not worth my time, estrogen-inducing and lard accumulation follows.

  4. I’d like to add #4, go talk to experts in the field. Spend less time with blogs, more time with people who are smarter than you :D

  5. Hey Vic, things going well? Looking forward to the next article. Hope you haven’t fallen off the rails.

  6. Leon Maderas says:

    If you are going to invest time reading I recommend you read 1-3 blogs max, and read more books instead. Read books about manly topics, about survival, about defense, about sound economics, about liberty, about great men. If you want to be man of stature you need a great physical appearance and you also need intellectual breadth. If you want to be a successful business person you have to learn to shut up about your trade and talk about the things that your client is interested on. If you don’t shit know about a topic don’t worry, ask questions instead. The most intelligent person is the one knows how to steer and direct a conversation by asking questions. It’s not the person who rambles on about everything he knows.

  7. Victor you are indeed a pioneer on how to create freedom. I used to teach Blogging for Business workshops and go into all sorts of detail about the RSS feed readers. These days I never, ever read my Google Reader feeds. I also scan through my Thunderbird RSS feeds once every other day. So maybe it’s a waste to even have them downloaded because they create anxiety when I do not read them. A better approach may be to Google Alerts on keywords for topics I do rely on. These Google Alerts only come into my inbox once per week.

  8. I still use RSS, but I’m very picky about what feeds stay in there. Once I realize a blog is a chore to read, or I haven’t gotten any value from it, I cut it off. I did that with Lifehacker when I realized it had descended into inane BS rather than the relevant lifehacking it started with.

    Social media is mostly useless. I check every couple of days just in case I miss something. Last time I stayed off Facebook for weeks, I found out something tragic happened to a friend, and somehow people think Facebook is the only way to relay information to other people. I reminded them that my phone and email are better, but they still insist on using Facebook.

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