Owning more of my own precious time

I read blogs and columns. I'm inspired by them. I have a whole list of blogs that I read. I try to be inspiring in turn to the five or so of you who read this one.

When I wanted to read blogs, I used to zip from blog to blog in the my Favorites list in Internet Explorer. Click, click, click, click, wait for page to load, scan it to see if I've already read it, then move on to the next one.

And then, a few days ago, I did something I've been meaning to do for a long time but never sat down and figured out...I signed up for a blog reader/organizer, otherwise known as an RSS reader. Here's the simple definition from Wikipedia:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content including, but not limited to, blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" [3] or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays

I signed up for Google Reader, one of many available, as because I'm on blogger.com (from Google) I already had an account. And...friends, it's magic. I know this is no news to perhaps all of you, but still I'm so delighted I had to post just in case someone didn't know about this.

Now...oh my, I just go to my one view page and whammo, it tells me how many of the blogs I read have new posts, and in just one click I see ALL of the new ones. I organized my blogs into category folders, so I know which categories have new posts, and then can see which specific blogs have them, all at one glance. It's awesome. It is definitely going to shave real tens of minutes off the time I spend not being productive each day.

I know my enthusiasm for this is so-10-minutes ago. I was never the first in a trend.

Of course, I could decide NOT to take my time reading blogs at all. Now THAT would shave a LOT off unproductive time. Hm.

But then I'd miss all of your great blogs.