I've noticed that more and more lately I spent too much time sifting through websites instead of actually getting something done. I tracked the web sites I went to and it turns out about 8-10 took up 90% of my time. Finally, I decided it was time for an RSS reader.

I've played around with a couple readers before but never really sat down and hashed out a good system for using one. After playing around with a couple different readers, I gave Google Reader a shot. I took the 13 sites that I visit on a daily basis and got started.

By only listing the titles of the articles it was amazing how much of the material on my favorite web sites that I was not even interested in. I'd say I read only about 30-40% of posted material. After about a week I've found that I can go through a days worth of new material on 10 sites in about 15 minutes. Before I spent probably 2-3 hours each day just sifting through material that I had either seen before or something that I had no interest in to begin with. Now I have to find another way to try and look busy at work.

The only two real drawbacks that I've seen so far are that
1) You lose some of the personality of the site. Each of my favorite sites has a different feel to it and you start to lose a sense of that when the layout and text for each site looks the exact same. I've found that opening a new tab for a link that really interests me helps keep some individuality with the sites
2) When you are away from your computer for a while, say out of town for the weekend, and come back there is usually a very daunting number of unread posts. I've been gone for 3 day and came back to 1000+ new stories. It's a huge number but then I realized that these were there before and either I read them or didn't, and I have the same options now.

All and all it's been a great experience and I will definitely continue to use an RSS reader.