Last weekend, I realized that the way I had been using feeds (RSS) had become unworkable. When I first got into feeds a few years ago, I thought the best way to organize them was by topic. Since I have very wide-ranging interests, I ended up with a sprawling collection comprised of more than 25 topic-based folders (science, media, environment, etc.) — some of which contained 30 or more feeds.

The result? I rarely checked my feeds. What was meant to save me time ended up creating drastic information overload.

The nasty side effect of this was that I wasn't keeping up with online conversations as well as I like. To me, online conversations are very important. They're the lifeblood of my networking, R&D, and marketing. They're also important to my personal life.

So I took the drastic step of reorganizing my feeds by task, switching to a new feed reader, and dumping about 80% of my feed subscriptions.

And I'm so much happier! Especially because I once again am comfortably in the flow of conversations that intrigue and inspire me. Also, it's now so much easier to follow and participate in conversations on behalf of my clients.

So here's the quick version of how I did it…

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