Readers - Productivity Improvement or Information Overload?

My work day usually begins around 6 AM to accommodate my east coast colleagues and meetings. A typical work day of mine includes a lot of collaborative meetings, emails, chats, and of course readings of hundreds of technology and business articles that pop-up in my Google Reader. I have a habit of hitting my Google Reader after few hours (around 8-9 AM PT) as most of my subscriptions are about Silicon Valley, Web 2.0, and Internet companies so most of them get content as the work day starts in the pacific coast.

Yesterday, I followed the same routine but little I knew the technology world had exploded within those two morning hours. My Reader was loaded with the news, articles, and blogs talking about Microsoft’s proposed Yahoo! acquisition. I was just two hours late, but I felt like I had missed the whole party! The articles and opinions were being written left and right by the industry pundits, and bloggers. Almost every subscription had some twisted story about the announcement. Additionally, as usual, the stock market was reacting. The Yahoo! stock was going up and the Microsoft stock was going down! Around PT noon time, the things had calmed down. The reality was setting in. The news and blog articles moved from the announcements to the consequences of the merger. Articles around technologies clashes, cultural mis-match, product over laps and lay offs started to pop-up in my subscriptions.

As I finished the work day, I had read so much about the merger that it felt like the announcement was made weeks or months ago. I didn’t need any more information to form my opinion or talk about the merger. I had all numbers on my finger tips. I could speak to both positive and negative consequences of the acquisition.

Later in the day, I stayed away from the Internet for few hours, and during those hours, I would realize that today I had just experienced a profound change in the way I consume breaking news in this new era of blogs and RSS readers. Only few years ago, I would normally read an acquisition or merger announcement on a news or technology website. Later in the week, my weekly magazine subscriptions would have articles on both positive and negative consequences of the announcement. Only after reading those paper magazines articles, I would understand details around the announcement and form my own opinion. Typically, it would be a week long process. Well, with the Microsoft-Yahoo! announcement yesterday, I consumed the same information in the same day and my opinion around the acquisition was ready at the end of the day.

Is this productivity improvement? Or is it information over-load? Well, I believe, it is more about personal preference of consuming information. Personally, I like juggling and working on multiple projects or initiatives. At work, I always get bored if I only have one thing going on. The Blogosphere has enabled me to multi-task more and thus has increased my satisfaction with the technology industry. However, there is a caveat around the multi-tasking. Each task takes more time and requires me to start much earlier in time to complete with quality and attention it needs. Therefore, I have adopted the habit of superior scheduling. And over time, I have come to realize that the habit of superior scheduling is the only way to remain productive and effective if you like multi-tasking and Blogosphere subscriptions.

I would like to know your thoughts around this shift on the information consumption through the blogs and articles aggregated in a single view of your favorite RSS reader.