Marshall Kirkpatrick posted some good advice about how to keep up with all of the RSS feeds in your reader. Boiled down to the essence:

1) You need an efficient reading mechanism (I use and recommend Google Reader.)

2) You need to keep your feeds organized so they make sense to you

3) You need to keep your feeds visibility high.

On that last point, a couple of suggestions that I made to Marshall wound up in his post: Add the Google Reader Button to your Google Toolbar (if you use it), and get a view of your feeds into your browser homepage. I use iGoogle, so integrating the Reader widget is a snap. (The image to the right is how it looks.)

One section that I think Marshall is missing from his post is along these lines:

Be Brutal

Be brutal to your subscription list. If you find yourself skimming most of the items in a feed, either find a way to filter them out before you see them, or unsubscribe from the feed altogether. (Note to TechBrew readers: This does not apply to you. Step away from the Unsubscribe button and skim past this item.)

This goes back to an article I wrote called “The Top 5 Reasons Your Co-Workers Don’t Use RSS“. The second reason was that people get overwhelmed by information overload. My advice was, and remains:

It is pretty easy to over-subscribe to RSS feeds and feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose. The best suggestion I’ve found to help you keep from getting overloaded is: “Too many RSS feeds? Put ‘em on probation.“. Granted, it’s more a mental+organizational approach rather than a tech trick, but it works.