A smart way of dealing with people sending you too many articles to read.
A friend, let’s call him John C.*, is a busy guy who gets tons of email. So much, in fact, that he can’t really process it all. It’s easy to get bogged down when folks are sending you links to check out, articles to read, etc. etc. So he found another way to deal with it.
I get an email from him today saying that if we have an article for him to read, we can simply email one address and he’ll be sure to get it. Since he uses a great service called Instapaper (you should too, it makes reading and savings articles super easy, and it’s free), he can have articles sent directly to his Instapaper and read them when he’s able. Instapaper also strips away all the other parts of the webpage (like ads and comments) so you can focus on the actual article.
I think it’s a great way of cutting through the noise that’s created by email inboxes, and can see lots of benefits for adopting that myself. Side note: it would be a great idea if gmail would filter links and articles and separate them from regular email messages.
So, I think I’m going to steal his idea. If you want to email an article for me to read, send it to my Instapaper! I’ll read it there and we can talk about it later. Probably.
* names changed to facilitate awkward flashbacks.
