Once I really started trying to catch up, it look less than a day. Here are a few observations I made along the way:
- Progressive lack of sleep1 combined with jetlag does not seem to help this process. The day that it took me only a small part of was Monday.
- I’ve got quite a few feeds that can be disposed of quickly for various reasons: * A couple of them are (I assume) broken, because most or all of the feed pops up as unread whenever a new item is added or (sometimes) just because it feels like it. * For some sources, I have to subscribe to multiple, overlapping feeds to get all the stuff I’m interested in.2 * Some have such a low S/N ratio that I either don’t bother with them and hit Mark All as Read3 or I tend to skim the item titles a page at a time looking for stuff I care about rather than spacing through everything.4
- Unsurprisingly, you notice how much material is repeated feed after feed far more when you’re reading most of a week’s items rather than a couple of hours worth.
At any rate, I’m back to my old daily process of asking myself why I’m subscribed to so many feeds that are full of crap.