Subscribe a lot, consume a little

The way I like to do content consumption is to subscribe to many different sources and then be ruthless about which content I actually choose to consume.

My favourite apps are the ones that make it easy to plough through the “feed” of content quickly and pick out which ones I want to read/watch/listen to.

Castro is a podcast app that feels like it was designed just for me. It has UX that lets me pick through the “inbox” of new podcast episodes, queue up what I want to listen to, and discard the rest.

Readwise Reader has the same functionality for RSS feeds and email newsletters. All new posts and emails get sent to the Reader feed, and reading them, saving for later, archiving or deleting is as simple as hitting a key (on desktop) or swiping (on mobile).

With apps like this, I don’t have to deal with overwhelm from subscribing to too many feeds, or FOMO from subscribing to too few feeds!

I wish that the YouTube UI could do this sort of thing. Then I would be set! You can “hide” videos and “add to watch later” from the subscriptions feed page, but those actions require multiple clicks, and it is slow and clunky.

Update: A number of people have reached out to let me know that YouTube Channels do have RSS feeds. I had always just assumed they wouldn’t do that, so this is welcome news! Now I can add my favourite channels to Readwise Reader.