Do less...worked for me!

Totally understand - I have hundreds of feeds waiting for me each am. The headlines that seem striking/ relevant/ downright cute I open in tabs - but never get to them in days of meetings. So at the end of the day, I bookmark what's left - now I have piles and piles of bookmarks and no time to read them. I hear the talk of Bit Literacy and the empty inbox philosophy - wish I could get there!

As far as RSS feeds go, one useful change I made was to unsubscribe from a number of feeds I knew other people were reading. I then subscribed to their shared items in Google Reader, which meant I only got the cream of the crop of what they thought was worth reading.

It's one small step towards information detox, but it works!

Vero

This is the nerdy, less personal version of Vero's recommendation: I use a tool called AideRSS quite a bit. You pipe an RSS feed through and it only gives you the top 50% or 25% of the posts, based on how many people commented on them, shared them, re-blogged them, etc. I've found it to be pretty good at separating signal from noise.

Also, do not fear the 'mark all as read' button. :-)

I wish I had a good answer to this question! But take a look at the comments on my recent post about Susan Jacoby's criticism of the Internet. Food for thought - http://schiffreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/astute-cultural-criticism-or-insidious.html

Oh, Anastasia-- I don't do NEARLY the amount of widespread blogging topics as you and I'm feeling the same way. You must be made of super hero stuff - traveling the country, putting on parties (with awesome musical talent), speaking in conferences galore, and still managing to run ypulse and everything therein.

I think the world of ya, and I'm glad I got to hang with you a bit this past weekend (although, sorry if I seemed grumpy- or less perky at the ypulse shin-dig, had a rough day with a random press guy, meh).

Cheers to you, and hopes for a breather :)

My advice is to ask yourself whether "Twitter" and "200+ feeds on Bloglines" are more useful or distracting.

If distracting, then stop using Twitter and Bloglines.

I'm in line with "atoosa," (regardless of if it's the real atoosa or someone poking fun. But here's constructive ideas that are going to seem basic.

1. Email - shut it off or only check during certain periods of the day. If it's important, people should/will call.
2. IM - same deal.
3. Structure your day and hopefully your week, in advance. I have more than a handful of clients and certain parts of my job (such as media pitching) can only happen during certain periods of the day.
4. Qualify business leads as early as possible to find out if they're really worth it. Talk budget and scope upfront.
5. I pre-load my blogs with content, but yours tend to focus on daily events, so that's not an option for you. Maybe switch to Mon-Tues-Fri?

A non-fiction author that I know just brought on an intern. She found a local college student interested in her field and now outsources some of her work to the student. The undergrad gets some work experience and contact building, the author isn't buried under a tidal wave of paperwork.

The beauty of technology means you can have an intern work remotely, so you cast a pretty wide net for help. Internships for college credit won't cost you a dime (though it would be nice to comp them tickets to YPulse events)

I went to a great event featuring Jane Wurwand, CEO and Founder of Dermalogica. she fought delegating work for a long time because she knew she could do it better. Her partner and husband finally told her that if she teach someone to do the work 80% as well as she could do it, their work output would be good enough.

Anastasia, I truly believe that somewhere in our chemistry we women think that we can never do enough, be enough, and achieve enough. But at some level, know that you are accomplished, informative, and well, awesome! I struggle with the same issue, so seeing your post felt a bit freeing to me. "I'm not alone," I thought, and like someone else mentioned, I'm nowhere near as busy as you. An independent publicist gave me good advice, which seems logical--schedule your hours, and when the hours are up, just stop. So easy to say, so hard to do. Just try to realize you'll do fantastic work and people will still love you and ypulse if you do a little bit less. Your work speaks for itself; it's fantastic. So, slow down and enjoy culture, don't just let us know about it. Thanks for all you do, Anastasia!

I have about six essential blogs I read every day, and I have renamed them so that they sit at the top of my bloglines reader list. The other hundred or so I skim in one sitting once a week and only pull out the best stuff to read and comment on. Your list as a whole can probably be thinned out a lot, especially if you're brave enough to be ruthless about it.

Do all of those blogs serve the purpose for which you are reading blogs in the first place? Just decide how much time you want to give to these things and use that time productively. If you can't get to everything, then you can't. If that really important?

And please remember that the reason some people post like madmen is because they have no life. Don't feel bad for not being a mouse potato.

Have you read Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Work Week"? There are lots of great ideas in there, and while I can't implement all of them (and I'm not about to outsource my life or livelihood to India) I did find it really inspirational.

Hi Dixie. It's funny, I haven't read it yet, but I met Tim at a tech event out here before his book launched -- we had a first time author bonding moment. Little did I know or imagine that his book would become an instant best seller!

I need to read that book Dixie/Anastasia...Amen to getting you an assistant who will relish getting to learn from you and doing cool stuff. You're blowing up, girl. As you let go of more, someone else gets to do something new, too. Which is cool. Which is why a fabulous college students now manages myspace for me:)