Google Reader: Keep home at home and work at work

Do you have trouble balancing work and home? Me too. Also, I am a firm believer in using one tool for work and home if at all possible. I love Google Reader but have found it can be distracting checking "work" feeds at "home" or "home" feeds at "work". (If you are new to Google Reader check out Getting Started With Google Reader). On the other hand, I love to check my home feeds at lunch at work.

The solution. The simply solution I came up with is to create two folders called Work and Home. Then I tagged all my feeds with one or the other. There were a few feeds that I marked incorrectly but that was easily cleared up. It feels great now to know that I can use Google Reader but focus on Work at work and Home at home.

Where else can this work? I find that this works well for tasks and emails. If you use one task manager for all your tasks, just create folders for Home and Work. This can work for emails as well.

So what about you? What helps you maintain your focus?

Also, if you want to see what I have found particularly interesting, check out my shared items. There are in the widget located in the left sidebar under "My Shared Items".

See also

• You Might Be A Responsaholic If . . .;
• Plaxo For More Pax

Comments

[Shirley]

hi - I agree with the folders concept! Indeed, I found as with my email inbox, my reader overfloweth. So I not only did the work/home folders, but I had to mature it a bit to create a handful high-level topics -- e.g., home-01-kids; home-02-news; home-03-finance; work-01-productivity; work-02-mktng; work-03-crm etc - that way they are still separated by work/home and even organized into the order I want to review them!./sab

[Craig Huggart]

Shirley:

Thanks for the comment. I think your idea has a lot of merit.

I recently was reading a book that suggestion something similar. Also, the author of the book suggested using the same system across all your computer and paper based filing.

Thanks again,

Craig