Rather than think about this in terms of technologies, first think about it in terms of scheduling. Every piece of incoming information falls into one of three priority levels; either it’s worth an interruption, it’s worth putting in a queue where it’s guaranteed to be read, or it’s something to spend surplus time on but okay to miss entirely. Most technologies span several of these priority levels; for example, emails from whitelisted senders are worth an interruption, emails from strangers which might be spam are only worth handling in batches, and mailing lists can be skipped.
The more information you get through a given channel, the lower that channel’s priority must be. For example, most people treat phone calls as worth an interruption, but high-profile figures use secretaries and handle their phone calls in batches. If information from different priority levels can’t be separated, then it all ends up at the lower level; for example, people who get too much unfiltered spam check their email less often. Good filters are important.
Some information sources require you to poll them; for example, loading a webcomic’s page to see if there’s a new comic. This is only worthwhile for high-volume, low-priority information sources—that is, you only load it if you have time to waste, and expect to always see something new. Lower-volume sources are better handled with something like an RSS feed, so that you can group a bunch of them together and see only things you haven’t read.
Rather than think about this in terms of technologies, first think about it in terms of scheduling. Every piece of incoming information falls into one of three priority levels; either it’s worth an interruption, it’s worth putting in a queue where it’s guaranteed to be read, or it’s something to spend surplus time on but okay to miss entirely. Most technologies span several of these priority levels; for example, emails from whitelisted senders are worth an interruption, emails from strangers which might be spam are only worth handling in batches, and mailing lists can be skipped.
The more information you get through a given channel, the lower that channel’s priority must be. For example, most people treat phone calls as worth an interruption, but high-profile figures use secretaries and handle their phone calls in batches. If information from different priority levels can’t be separated, then it all ends up at the lower level; for example, people who get too much unfiltered spam check their email less often. Good filters are important.
Some information sources require you to poll them; for example, loading a webcomic’s page to see if there’s a new comic. This is only worthwhile for high-volume, low-priority information sources—that is, you only load it if you have time to waste, and expect to always see something new. Lower-volume sources are better handled with something like an RSS feed, so that you can group a bunch of them together and see only things you haven’t read.