Productivity: Reading News The GTD Way

By Daniel Miessler on August 1st, 2005: Tagged as Firefox | GTD | Productivity | RSS

The way most of us take in daily news is horribly inefficient. The problem isn’t how fast we read, or even what sites we go to — it’s the process of finding news, taking it in, and returning to work. Our current habits are based in the need for distraction and the fear that we’re missing something. We wander back and forth between our main sites — refreshing each one multiple times per day, or even per hour. This approach is guaranteed to leave you 1) feeling frustrated, and 2) far less productive. There’s a better way.

Enter GTD

Most of us are familiar by now with David Allen‘s groundbreaking productivity system called GTD. The fundamental concept in his system is that anything you have floating around in your head that you haven’t actively addressed and written down can and will destroy your ability to function efficiently.

In other words, the conscious and subconcious constantly fight for your brain’s limited processing power, and if you have 8 things floating around in your head while you’re trying to get work done, you could only be using 40% of your potential on your current task. The GTD approach is simple — you let your subconscious relax — thereby getting all that brainpower back that your “background processes” were hogging. Tasks become easier, you’re able to stay focused, etc, etc.

Interestingly enough, this very same concept applies to reading your daily news.

Fighting The Urges

Like many others, the urge to check the latest goings on in the blogsphere and/or news is overpowering. We simply can’t help but be distracted by the thought of something new and exciting hitting the Internet without us knowing. Much productivity is lost during the day specifically because of this phenomenon; but there’s hope. The answer lies in a two-step process — 1) using a dependable system, and 2) learning to trust that system. Sound Familiar?

The System

The system I use is based on two products — NetNewsWire, an OS X based RSS Aggregator, and Firefox (thanks to Ken for showing me the power of the combo). The way it works is actually quite simple: I first go through my feeds one by one, from top to bottom. When I hit a story I enjoy, I either double-click it or press enter. This creates a new tab in Firefox (which remains in the background) for each story I want to read more about. So if there isn’t enough in the RSS feed, or I have some other reason to check the actual site out, I have that content waiting for me in Firefox.

Next, in phase two, I close my RSS reader and head to Firefox. Waiting for me is every single site that I found interesting for that session. This includes personal blogs, security news, world events, etc. I then move from right to left skimming the content of each tab. Once I’m through with each, I cmd/ctrl-w out of the tab which automatically selects the next one on the left. I move through each tab in this fashion until I have read all my content. After I’m done, I minimize my browser and get to work.

The key here (just like in GTD) is trusting your system. When you’re 1) confident about the feeds you have in your aggregator, and 2) you know you went through them methodically, you then know that you’ve seen the vast majority of what there is to see. That’s the whole point of this — getting your mind to relax.

When you’re opening a myriad of websites and checking each at different times, there’s never an end to it. With this system there is. You check your reliable feeds, open anything of interest, read them all in turn, then you’re done.

Getting Started

Ok, so what do you need to get started? As I said, I use NetNewsWire for my aggregator, but it’s an OS X app that not everyone can use. A friend of mine uses the same system but using Bloglines instead of NetNewsWire. Bloglines is a web-based aggregator that can perform pretty much the same role as a local app. My buddy runs it from Firefox (naturally), which lets one simply wheel-click links to get them to open in a new tab, just like I do within NetNewsWire by pressing enter or double-clicking a story.

Here’s what you need to do to get started:

Find yourself an RSS Aggregator. (Here’s a decent place to start looking for one.)
Find RSS feeds for your favorite sites.

Then, once you’re all set up, here’s your system for checking news:

Open your RSS reader.
Move through the new stories, opening the ones you want to read more about in new tabs within Firefox.
Close your RSS reader and move to Firefox.
Skim/read each story you’ve opened, closing each tab as you finish.
When you’re done with the last tab, close Firefox. You’re done.

Learning To Let Go

The last step of the system is learning to trust that you’re getting enough news from it. One could make the argument that you could just do that with your current habits and be done with it, but it’s not nearly as easy as with a system that has a start and finish.

What this process does is make a strong argument to your subconscious that nothing else is needed for the moment. It’s much harder to make that argument when you’re not sure if you checked all your sites, or if all your sites are still open there to look at. The key is to close the RSS reader and keep it closed until it’s time to read news again. Once you close your RSS reader, all you need to do to catch up is read the open tabs in Firefox — that’s the key. I do this roughly 3 times a day now — once in the morning, once after lunch, and maybe one additional time before going home.

Ultimately, this is really about being able to get back to work with a calm, efficient mind. Conquering the obsession over news intake is a major step in that process, and I hope this GTD approach helps you as much as it’s helped me.:

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http://www.skryking.net/ Jason Ormes

Hey,

I do the same think using akregator which opens articles that I want to see completely in a separate embedded browser tab…

Jason
http://www.skryking.net Jason Ormes

Hey,

I do the same think using akregator which opens articles that I want to see completely in a separate embedded browser tab…

Jason
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http://marksite.co.uk/ Mark

Why use Frefox at all? Surely that’s just complicating things when NetNewWire has its own tabbed browser built in?
http://marksite.co.uk Mark

Why use Frefox at all? Surely that’s just complicating things when NetNewWire has its own tabbed browser built in?
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http://www.dmiessler.com/ daniel

Mark, the main concept for this system isn’t really the tabs — it’s the closing of the first app (the news reader). The key is to tell your mind that once you’re done with that app, all you have to do is finish reading the stories that you opened. Once you’ve read them all, you’re done.

If you stay in the same application, you haven’t done much in the way of GTD; you’re still going to be equally tempted to refresh your content to see if you’ve missed anything — and that’s precisely what we’re trying to avoid.

Good question, though…
http://www.dmiessler.com daniel

Mark, the main concept for this system isn’t really the tabs — it’s the closing of the first app (the news reader). The key is to tell your mind that once you’re done with that app, all you have to do is finish reading the stories that you opened. Once you’ve read them all, you’re done.

If you stay in the same application, you haven’t done much in the way of GTD; you’re still going to be equally tempted to refresh your content to see if you’ve missed anything — and that’s precisely what we’re trying to avoid.

Good question, though…
http://www.utterdoul.com/ Utter Doul

Bingo! This is exactly what I do using BlogLines and Firefox. The added advantage of BlogLines is that since its server based, I have my rss aggregator anywhere I have an internet connection and a browser.

Regarding the ‘trusting your system’ part, sometimes I would loose all my open tabs if I accidentally closed firefox or if it crashed. I now use extensions such as Session Saver and UndoCloseTab; this has helped me trust my system even more (I still do loose the tabs, but it is much more unlikely now).

Just my $0.02 :)
http://www.utterdoul.com Utter Doul

Bingo! This is exactly what I do using BlogLines and Firefox. The added advantage of BlogLines is that since its server based, I have my rss aggregator anywhere I have an internet connection and a browser.

Regarding the ‘trusting your system’ part, sometimes I would loose all my open tabs if I accidentally closed firefox or if it crashed. I now use extensions such as Session Saver and UndoCloseTab; this has helped me trust my system even more (I still do loose the tabs, but it is much more unlikely now).

Just my $0.02 :)
http://marksite.co.uk/ Mark

Ah I see, thanks for the explanation. Makes a bit more sense now!
http://marksite.co.uk Mark

Ah I see, thanks for the explanation. Makes a bit more sense now!
Kirk McElhearn

Why not just use NNW to view the articles? You can set it to open articles in tabs in NNW, so you won’t even need to switch to FF.
Kirk McElhearn

Why not just use NNW to view the articles? You can set it to open articles in tabs in NNW, so you won’t even need to switch to FF.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/godlyperspectiv/ Dmitri Z.

Excellent points, about using RSS + Firefox! I’m surprised nobody mentioned the last step of that loop — bookmarking and tagging the really good articles or links, for future retrieval, which is where http://del.icio.us/ , the social bookmars manager, comes in. If you use the del.icio.us bookmarklet or Firefox plugin, the cycle then becomes RSS Reader -> Tabs -> read & evaluate -> bookmark & tag to del.icio.us
http://www.livejournal.com/users/godlyperspectiv/ Dmitri Z.

Excellent points, about using RSS + Firefox! I’m surprised nobody mentioned the last step of that loop — bookmarking and tagging the really good articles or links, for future retrieval, which is where http://del.icio.us/ , the social bookmars manager, comes in. If you use the del.icio.us bookmarklet or Firefox plugin, the cycle then becomes RSS Reader -> Tabs -> read & evaluate -> bookmark & tag to del.icio.us
http://www.dmiessler.com/ daniel

Good point Dimitri, check out this post from a few days back:

http://dmiessler.com/archives/395
http://www.dmiessler.com daniel

Good point Dimitri, check out this post from a few days back:

http://dmiessler.com/archives/395
rick

i understand the author’s point about closing NNW and going to FireFox but the only reason to do that is to avoid his personal temptation to refresh his rss feeds. Where do you draw that line? could always re-open the app and refresh them, too. sometimes being efficient requires some personal control.

i agree, opening the links in a separate browser is just an additional and unnecessary step. I’ve been doing pretty much what the author writes, but all in NNW. I go through, i open the articles i want to read in separate tabs, i read em and that’s it. i close the app and i’m done. no muss, no fuss.

and i’ve zero temptation to refresh before closing. once i work through the open links in stage 1, and then read my selections in stage 2, i’m done.
rick

i understand the author’s point about closing NNW and going to FireFox but the only reason to do that is to avoid his personal temptation to refresh his rss feeds. Where do you draw that line? could always re-open the app and refresh them, too. sometimes being efficient requires some personal control.

i agree, opening the links in a separate browser is just an additional and unnecessary step. I’ve been doing pretty much what the author writes, but all in NNW. I go through, i open the articles i want to read in separate tabs, i read em and that’s it. i close the app and i’m done. no muss, no fuss.

and i’ve zero temptation to refresh before closing. once i work through the open links in stage 1, and then read my selections in stage 2, i’m done.
http://www.dmiessler.com/ daniel

Rick,

You make an excellent point about the fact that this system (along with countless others) is designed to do nothing but keep one from re-opening their news app. That’s exactly what it does.

The problem with your point is that it’s too true. In short, you’re saying that a system like this isn’t needed because all we need is some self control. Well, yeah. :)

That’s sort of the point, though; some of us have more of a problem with this than others. If that were not the case, Lifehacker wouldn’t exist, nor would the entire GTD system itself.

The fact of the matter is that some people don’t need systems such as these. Some people read about GTD and laugh at it because they’ve been doing it for years without reading a silly book about it. They don’t need the steps and the lists and such to implement what is second nature to them.

But that’s not most people.

Most people benefit greatly from tips and tricks for fooling the mind similarly to what’s described in this write-up. Does that make us inferior for not being able to simply exert self-control? Perhaps. But it doesn’t make it any less so.

So I totally agree that if there is a tendency to do something with a rating of 80, then the best answer is to exert self-control at a strength of 81. No argument there. My point to you is that if someone has an issue with self-control, then it may be beneficial to use a system that reduces the tendency down to 70. This way, the amount of self control needed is much less. It’s a hack, to be sure, but if it works then I’ll take it.

Thanks for your comment, though…it’s an important point.
http://www.dmiessler.com daniel

Rick,

You make an excellent point about the fact that this system (along with countless others) is designed to do nothing but keep one from re-opening their news app. That’s exactly what it does.

The problem with your point is that it’s too true. In short, you’re saying that a system like this isn’t needed because all we need is some self control. Well, yeah. :)

That’s sort of the point, though; some of us have more of a problem with this than others. If that were not the case, Lifehacker wouldn’t exist, nor would the entire GTD system itself.

The fact of the matter is that some people don’t need systems such as these. Some people read about GTD and laugh at it because they’ve been doing it for years without reading a silly book about it. They don’t need the steps and the lists and such to implement what is second nature to them.

But that’s not most people.

Most people benefit greatly from tips and tricks for fooling the mind similarly to what’s described in this write-up. Does that make us inferior for not being able to simply exert self-control? Perhaps. But it doesn’t make it any less so.

So I totally agree that if there is a tendency to do something with a rating of 80, then the best answer is to exert self-control at a strength of 81. No argument there. My point to you is that if someone has an issue with self-control, then it may be beneficial to use a system that reduces the tendency down to 70. This way, the amount of self control needed is much less. It’s a hack, to be sure, but if it works then I’ll take it.

Thanks for your comment, though…it’s an important point.
http://engrm.com/blogometer/index.html Alan Gutierrez

The most powerful way to augment this system would be to index the pages in NetNewsWire and FireFox as they are read. Then you don’t have to worry about bookmarking pages if they are things you want to remember. You don’t have to worry about finding it again via Google. You can simply search the magical subset of pages that you have seen yourself. If you remember a key phrase, for example, if I were to search for Getting Things Done and Firefox, it would bring up this page, and this page alone, since I’ve not read about this combination anywhere else.
http://engrm.com/blogometer/index.html Alan Gutierrez

The most powerful way to augment this system would be to index the pages in NetNewsWire and FireFox as they are read. Then you don’t have to worry about bookmarking pages if they are things you want to remember. You don’t have to worry about finding it again via Google. You can simply search the magical subset of pages that you have seen yourself. If you remember a key phrase, for example, if I were to search for Getting Things Done and Firefox, it would bring up this page, and this page alone, since I’ve not read about this combination anywhere else.
rick

Daniel, first, my post came off kinda snotty which wasn’t the intent, so my apologies for that. I think GTD is a great system, no complaints there. I’m just noting that one can implement this concept without necessarily going to the length of using the second app to do it. That’s where one can tailor it based on their habits and desires, which is what makes things like GTD ultimately so powerful. What I really like about the system is the concept of not reading as you go, but go through all the headlines first, opening each one but saving the reading for stage 2. imo, THAT is what really provides the efficiency boost here, at least for me.

Alan…..I have a system that does this for the things I care about. It doesn’t index everything, because i don’t care about everything i read, just what i chose to save for future reference. if you haven’t checked it out (and only if you use a Mac), check out DevonThink Pro over at devon technologies. amazing app for storing and organizing information. For example, i could ‘capture’ this web page and import it to DT Pro with just a couple clicks and now i’ve got it permanently, with every word indexed. I could have a database of 10,000 web pages/text files/images, and still enter the search string, ‘netnewswire gtd’ and it would take about .5 seconds to retrieve and display this doc. also uses artificial intelligence to auto classify and group, find ‘like’ documents, etc… it’s become one of my most used applications.
rick

Daniel, first, my post came off kinda snotty which wasn’t the intent, so my apologies for that. I think GTD is a great system, no complaints there. I’m just noting that one can implement this concept without necessarily going to the length of using the second app to do it. That’s where one can tailor it based on their habits and desires, which is what makes things like GTD ultimately so powerful. What I really like about the system is the concept of not reading as you go, but go through all the headlines first, opening each one but saving the reading for stage 2. imo, THAT is what really provides the efficiency boost here, at least for me.

Alan…..I have a system that does this for the things I care about. It doesn’t index everything, because i don’t care about everything i read, just what i chose to save for future reference. if you haven’t checked it out (and only if you use a Mac), check out DevonThink Pro over at devon technologies. amazing app for storing and organizing information. For example, i could ‘capture’ this web page and import it to DT Pro with just a couple clicks and now i’ve got it permanently, with every word indexed. I could have a database of 10,000 web pages/text files/images, and still enter the search string, ‘netnewswire gtd’ and it would take about .5 seconds to retrieve and display this doc. also uses artificial intelligence to auto classify and group, find ‘like’ documents, etc… it’s become one of my most used applications.
http://www.dmiessler.com/ daniel

Wow, interesting app concept, Rick. I’ll definitely check into that too. I myself use Delicious for indexing good content, and as Dimitri pointed out, I should have included that step in the write-up.

I definitely see your point though; I just think it’s a matter of personal preference at a certain point. I personally want to view all web content in Firefox right now. That, of course, could change at some point, but for now it’s my preference.

So not only do I think having the second app as a layer of separation is a good idea, I also wouldn’t want to view the content within NNW itself. Again, just a personal preference, though.

Thanks so much for the valuable input. :)
http://www.dmiessler.com daniel

Wow, interesting app concept, Rick. I’ll definitely check into that too. I myself use Delicious for indexing good content, and as Dimitri pointed out, I should have included that step in the write-up.

I definitely see your point though; I just think it’s a matter of personal preference at a certain point. I personally want to view all web content in Firefox right now. That, of course, could change at some point, but for now it’s my preference.

So not only do I think having the second app as a layer of separation is a good idea, I also wouldn’t want to view the content within NNW itself. Again, just a personal preference, though.

Thanks so much for the valuable input. :)
rick

my pleasure. and while you’re at it, check out DevonThink Pro’s sister app, DevonAgent. It’s like having a paid internet search assistant. If you use the web for serious research, it’s amazing. It can be structured to look at specified websites, it can actually use artificial intelligence to follow promising links up to 5 levels deep, it can be setup to crawl websites you frequent to find new information, very impressive application and when used in tandem with DevonThink Pro, the power is remarkable.

on a side note, i read a few threads at the DevonTech forums where some folks are using DevonThink Pro as their GTD tool. Lots of ways to skin this cat, i guess.
http://deleted rick

my pleasure. and while you’re at it, check out DevonThink Pro’s sister app, DevonAgent. It’s like having a paid internet search assistant. If you use the web for serious research, it’s amazing. It can be structured to look at specified websites, it can actually use artificial intelligence to follow promising links up to 5 levels deep, it can be setup to crawl websites you frequent to find new information, very impressive application and when used in tandem with DevonThink Pro, the power is remarkable.

on a side note, i read a few threads at the DevonTech forums where some folks are using DevonThink Pro as their GTD tool. Lots of ways to skin this cat, i guess.
http://www.gordonmclean.co.uk/ Gordon

Just to throw this into the hat – there is an RSS Reader called Sage which runs in the sidebar of Firefox. Would give you full integration. One app to start with, just close that sidebar when you’ve gone through your feeds.
http://www.gordonmclean.co.uk/ Gordon

Just to throw this into the hat – there is an RSS Reader called Sage which runs in the sidebar of Firefox. Would give you full integration. One app to start with, just close that sidebar when you’ve gone through your feeds.
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Ly

I’m from Brazil, your blog is nice. This point is very interesting and we can discuss it all day. But I spent here only to congratulations you for put us to think. I’m making a link to my blog in Brazil.

super beijus ( rsrsr, kisses)

Ly
Ly

I’m from Brazil, your blog is nice. This point is very interesting and we can discuss it all day. But I spent here only to congratulations you for put us to think. I’m making a link to my blog in Brazil.

super beijus ( rsrsr, kisses)

Ly
John Stoner
I see two problems:
1. Using bloglines doesn’t have the “close the other app” benefit. I use bloglines, but I open the other tabs in the same window… is there any way to open tabs in a different window? That might help. And I hate getting a big pile of open windows on my desktop;
Also, blog articles also link to other things on the net… I guess my issue isn;’t so much with undisciplined feed use, it’s with undisciplined surfing in general. Blog pages are web pages, after all.

Any tips for managing that habit?
John Stoner
I see two problems:
1. Using bloglines doesn’t have the “close the other app” benefit. I use bloglines, but I open the other tabs in the same window… is there any way to open tabs in a different window? That might help. And I hate getting a big pile of open windows on my desktop;
Also, blog articles also link to other things on the net… I guess my issue isn;’t so much with undisciplined feed use, it’s with undisciplined surfing in general. Blog pages are web pages, after all.

Any tips for managing that habit?
http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel

How much time should be dedicated to following links within articles?

I think the best answer is for you to decide in a very general way how deep you want to go, and how much time you want to devote to news reading. The answer to that question is what will guide your decisions on whether to follow links or not.

If you agree with yourself that you should spend no more than 15-30 minutes reading news, then you can’t really follow too many links at all. But if you devote an hour then you can follow a good number of links on a whim without crossing into the “too much” territory. It’s all about how important you think casual browsing/reading is.

This piece, by the way, is sort of oriented towards those who have come to the conclusion that reading news is not as important as doing other things. If that’s the case for you then I would consider not following any links at all during “regular” news reading. If anything, just archive/bookmark for later. If you want to do that kind of deep browsing in a dedicated session then go ahead and do so as a separate activity, but I think it’d be best if you kept your daily reading down to the sources you’ve selected. That’s my take on it…hope it helps.
http://dmiessler.com Daniel

How much time should be dedicated to following links within articles?

I think the best answer is for you to decide in a very general way how deep you want to go, and how much time you want to devote to news reading. The answer to that question is what will guide your decisions on whether to follow links or not.

If you agree with yourself that you should spend no more than 15-30 minutes reading news, then you can’t really follow too many links at all. But if you devote an hour then you can follow a good number of links on a whim without crossing into the “too much” territory. It’s all about how important you think casual browsing/reading is.

This piece, by the way, is sort of oriented towards those who have come to the conclusion that reading news is not as important as doing other things. If that’s the case for you then I would consider not following any links at all during “regular” news reading. If anything, just archive/bookmark for later. If you want to do that kind of deep browsing in a dedicated session then go ahead and do so as a separate activity, but I think it’d be best if you kept your daily reading down to the sources you’ve selected. That’s my take on it…hope it helps.
http://www.animud.com/blog/links/ animud

The Producer Price index (PPI) last week showed a bigger-than-expected rise in wholesale prices, fundeling com but little in the way of so-called core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices. Iran directly funds the activities of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah. animud http://www.animud.com/blog/links/
http://www.animud.com/blog/links/ animud

The Producer Price index (PPI) last week showed a bigger-than-expected rise in wholesale prices, fundeling com but little in the way of so-called core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices. Iran directly funds the activities of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah. animud http://www.animud.com/blog/links/
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Productivity: Reading News The GTD Way

By Daniel Miessler on August 1st, 2005: Tagged as Firefox | GTD | Productivity | RSS

Enter GTD

Fighting The Urges

The System

Getting Started

Learning To Let Go

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