It is impossible for anyone to keep up with everything that happens every single day.

Back in 2008, stuck between Youtube videos, tweets, Flickr contacts, etcetera, I realized this. I decided to filter out what I really needed daily through a tight collection of RSS feeds and email subscriptions. I started with an initial list of 10 to 20 in Google Reader and it grew from there. I will skip the growing pains of this method, but trust me, it was hard to find a happy medium between being overwhelmed with content and feeling informed.

Fast-forward to the present day and I have over 400 RSS feeds residing on my Fever in over 20 different folder categories, the main being photography, technology, art and design, and coding. I also have one folder labeled awesome where I have a select few including Seth Godin’s blog. I will save the full list of my RSS for another post. The rest of this post will focus on what I read via email every day.

My email subscriptions are even more pared down than my RSS. Here is my daily reading schedule (when the emails hit my inbox):

6am- The Brief

The Brief is “Today in technology, updated once a day” that includes great headlines on what the tech press will be talking about throughout the day.

630am - News.me

News.me is “a small team based out of betaworks in New York City. We build applications that improve the way people find and talk about the news.” Their headlines never cross with what The Brief posts, which I like.

7am - Vimeo

Vimeo is where I find great artists posting videos about their works. The daily email is only new content from contacts I am following on Vimeo (similar to Flickr’s ‘latest from your contacts’).

8am - Newser

Newser is a news aggregator website. I would skip the site completely and just sign-up for their email newsletter.

830am - Daily Digg

Digg has done a great pivot into a news-discovery tool from its root as a social news aggregation site. From the site: “Digg delivers the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet right now. The Internet is full of great stories, and Digg helps you find, read, and share the very best ones.” Sign up for the Daily Digg by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the main page.

12pm - SWAYY

Swayy is yet another service trying to intelligently recommend content to you based on the content you follow on other social media sites. From the site: “Swayy brings you the best content to easily share with your audience and followers, based on their interests and engagement.” @getswayy on twitter

4pm - NextDraft

From the site: “The day’s most fascinating news.” Also: “Dave Pell is a first class picker, packer and shipper of the nuggets you need to know. NextDraft will make you love email again.” by Michael Sippey, Twitter

NextDraft also has an iPhone app that you can download.

So there you have it. This is what I read every day at a minimum, even when I don’t have time for my RSS feeds, I can always open my mail app and read these highlights from the day’s news.

How do you keep up? Send me a message on twitter or [email][2] me. [2]: mailto:james@jamescampbell.us?subject=Hello “Email me”