Thanks for this great advice! Term hasn’t even started for me yet, but I’m already falling behind on reading. Culling my RSS feeds has always been something I’ve struggled with, but I also believe that keeping the amount of blogs I read manageable is the key to solving information overload (for me anyways).
Maura — I really appreciate your comments. I’m three weeks into a new job and the first thing that had to go was (believe it or not) the TV. Sleep is at a premium. Your comment on building “intentional time for reading” really has given me a lot to think about.
Thank you, Maura, for your insights. I regularly go through my feed reader and weed out sites that haven’t updated in a while or ones that I know longer read. Google reader has a bare bones stats system that helps me out (though, it could be better).
One question: what alert service do you use for your table of contents alerts?
I’m so glad to hear that others are grappling with these same issues. So far, so good for me, though we’ll see how it goes when our busy instruction season kicks in.
Robin, I agree that sleep is paramount. I let my sleep discipline slide last fall during my first real semester at my job and I’m convinced that I was more stressed for it.
John, I usually just have WilsonWeb and EBSCO email journal TOC alerts to me. This is not necessarily the best way — they all come in on the same day so it can feel like a temporary email overload. For OA journals using the Open Journal Systems I get them via RSS and read with Google (my usual feed reader), which I vastly prefer. I should add it to my list to check to see if I can switch the emails to RSS.
Pingback: Two weeks into the semester . . . according to me « What Now?
Pingback: Article Series (4): Clear Coping Mechanisms for Dealing with Information Overload « What Now?