I previously talked about reordering my Google reader in order to make my life less overwhelming. A little over a month has gone by and I thought I'd post an update about how it's worked.
Things have been a tremendous success. By simply re-categorizing my feeds into Low Volume, High Value and Low Value I have make my life so much more pleasant. Here's how it works on a daily basis.
Low Volume: These are feeds that have less then 1 or 2 posts per day in them. Examples are Penelope Trunk's Blog, Adventures in Capitalism and Modite. These are feeds that because they are low volume, how much value they produce for me is of little consequence.
High Value: These are feeds that have more then 1 or 2 posts a day but that I want to make sure to pay attention to. The only 4 feeds I have in this folder are TechCrunch, Mashable, Silicon Alley Insider and Brazen Careerist's Featured Posts.
Low Value: These are fun feeds that are interesting, sometimes I get value from them, but honestly if I don't get to them it's not the end of the world. Examples are AfterEllen.com, JDub Records and Boing Boing. If I'm busy, I don't bother with these and if they start piling up I just mark them all as read and get on with my life.
I also have a folder for my Google Alerts which I might glance at once in a while and a humor folder where I subscribe to a couple comic strips.
I've found that by organizing feeds on by volume and value I don't feel overwhelmed that I'm missing something important anymore. With Google Reader on my iPhone I check my feeds whenever I have a little downtime and now I know exactly what I should be checking.