As I was perusing through my Google Reader Feeds today, I noticed and clicked on the “Trends” button for the first time. I wasn’t too surprised by the number of items read in the last 30 days, or the time of day that I read the most items, but when I clicked on the “Day of the Week” tab, I was blown away by what I saw:
I don’t check my feeds on Tuesdays?
When I thought about this for a second, I realized that this really is an accurate graph of my average week. I come in on Monday feeling detached, so I tend to catch up on everyones blogs and get reacquainted with my current projects, but I never feel like I’ve gotten enough work done on Monday. This usually leads to a self-imposed sense of urgency by the end of the day Monday, which in turn leads to a distractionless, work-focused Tuesday. By Wednesday I’m feeling confident that I can meet all of the necessary deadlines and try to catch back up with the outside world. Thursday brings the realization that I overcompensated on Wednesday so I buckle back down and get a reasonable amount of work done while still taking enough personal time to stay connected. In an ideal world, every day would go like Thursday. It’s the perfect balance between productivity and social awareness…but then comes Friday. Friday tends to be the day everybody want to go out for lunch, or walk to Starbucks, or hang out talking about weekend plans. It’s a fun day in the office, but somehow I manage to read just as many feeds on Friday as I do on Monday. You can just imagine what that does for my productivity.
So what about you? If you use Google Reader, what does your trends screen say about your average week. Discover any interesting patterns?
Information?! That’s more compelling than Gears. Now I really want to switch over to Google Reader….
Interesting stats, good explanation of your weekly routine. I’ve never noticed the trends option until I saw it here, I usually just click through the feeds from the google.com/ig homepage, where I also have my to-do list, calendar, spreadsheets, etc.
I’m afraid my pattern isn’t as interesting, it doesn’t say much about my week. Sunday is when I don’t do a lot of reading. That’s probably because saturday is when I go through most of the articles that have piled up. I usually spend my saturday mornings reading, if I’m not outside, enjoying the outdoors. Feed reader trends confirm I do a similar amount of reading tuesday through friday. I’d say that’s because I like to make short breaks from work. If a post is short, I read it, if it’s not, I mark it as unread and leave it for later.
Just thought I’d take this oppurtunity to say that I finally got your book, and it is brilliant. Two days later I got Photoshop (I was using PSP before) and as you can imagine that was one hell of a good week. Brilliant book, hope you find time to write another :).
See ya,
Darragh G.