A few weeks ago, I decided to do something about the hundreds of unread emails and RSS items staring me in the face every day. Even though I was diligently filtering less important emails and feeds away from my inbox and into sub folders, I was still getting too many “holy smokes! 273 unread items, oh wait it’s just my Swim Cap Fashion News folder” moments. My theory was that even though I was not checking those items very frequently, just seeing the folders bolded and the unread items count nagging me was a adding up to a significant distraction.
Here’s what I did about it:
- For email, I unsubscribed from every newsletter I could find, I added a bunch more filtering rules to send email that doesn’t require my immediate attention to a subfolder (which also keeps them off my Blackberry), and – most crucially – I started hiding all subfolders from view so I don’t even see anything other than the inbox. Out of sight, out of mind.
- For RSS feeds, I noted which feeds I was looking forward to reading and then unsubscribed from everything else. I went from 137 to 42 subscriptions. We’ll see how long that lasts.
- I’ve also changed my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts to never send me emails under any circumstances – Facebook has 28 email different settings to turn off! – which probably means I’ll forget to ever check those accounts again.
The end result? It feels like I got back an hour or two of uninterrupted time every day. I know I’m not literally getting that much time back, but the effect of reducing (or simply hiding) my unread items has been clearly noticeable.
Toni.org 
3 replies on “The tyranny of unread items”
"Mark all as read" 🙂
Yeah, but that makes me feel guilty!
I used to be this way, but I am now able to leave thousands of items unread in Google Reader, without succumbing to that feeling of panic.
I've even stopped marking all as read.
I believe I have found Zen in feed-aggregation.