I've only recently discovered the Google Reader "List" view, as distinct from the "Expanded" view. Now, it sounds like a really tiny thing - to see only headlines instead of the whole story - but it's saving me time. I'm subscribed to about 40 news feeds, some of them very active, and so I usually have a pretty decent backlog of news to sift through. The list view helps me do that just a bit faster by minimising the scrolling I do. It really is a little thing, but it's one of those little changes that brings big rewards. It's hard to convey in words, and I don't have any real statistics to back it up. I'm estimating that my news reading is taking only about a third of the time it used to.
Mokalus of Borg
PS - Very nerdy, I know.
PPS - But when I felt like I was drowning in news, it's fantastic.
Small change... Yes
ReplyDeleteSeemingly insignificant... Yes
Ability to save hours by not reading things you really aren't that interested in... FANTASTIC!
No nerds about it... I wish I had something that summarized all the crap I have to read!
Those are called "secretaries" aren't they? ;)
ReplyDeleteMaybe several years from now, when language processing is up to the task, we'll have software to read and summarise articles for us. I expect the market then to become suddenly flooded by "ten-minute books": auto-summarised versions of novels for tomorrow's busy reader.
Of course then you'll have more work to do, because the reading takes less time and you can fit more in.