Reading & Attention
How to Build a Personal Reading List With RSS
RSS never actually went away, it just stopped being the default. A practical, beginner-friendly guide to picking sources and reading them back in order, with no platform deciding what you see first.
What RSS actually is, in plain terms
RSS is a simple, decades-old standard that lets a website publish a plain, structured list of its latest posts, its title, a link, a date, sometimes a short summary, that any reader app can pull in and display. When a site publishes a new article, it shows up in that feed automatically, in the order it was published, with nothing deciding whether you should see it based on engagement, ad revenue, or anything else. It's a genuinely old idea, but it's aged well precisely because it's simple and it isn't owned by any single platform that might change the rules later.
Why it's worth using now
The appeal of RSS in the current moment isn't nostalgia, it's a direct answer to algorithm fatigue and the endless-scroll design covered in our piece on why your brain is tired of the algorithm. A reading list built from feeds you chose yourself, shown in the order they were actually published, has a natural end. You can genuinely finish it. That single property, a real stopping point, is most of what makes it feel different from scrolling a ranked feed, and it's a property no algorithmic platform is incentivized to offer you, since an infinite feed is generally better for their business than a finite one.
Choosing your first sources
Start smaller than feels necessary, five to ten sources rather than fifty. A short list you actually read consistently beats a long one that overwhelms you the first week and gets abandoned. Good early candidates are sources you already seek out directly, a favorite blog, a newsletter you enjoy but keep losing in your inbox, a news site's specific section rather than its entire homepage. Most publishing platforms and blogs still have a feed available even if it's not advertised prominently, usually found by adding "/feed" or "/rss" to the site's address, or by checking near the footer for an RSS icon.
Quality over volume
It's tempting to add every interesting source you come across, but a reading list with too many feeds starts to recreate the exact overwhelm you were trying to escape, just without the ranking to at least surface something. A useful discipline: for every new feed you add, consider removing or pausing one that's been consistently low-value. The goal is a list you look forward to reading, not one you dread opening.
Read it like a list, not a firehose
The biggest shift in habit, coming from algorithmic feeds, is treating a chronological reading list as something to actually work through and finish, rather than something to dip into indefinitely. Reading oldest-to-newest, in the order things were actually published, keeps the context of a developing story or series intact in a way that jumping around doesn't. When you reach the end, you're caught up, genuinely, not just tired of scrolling.
Prune actively, and don't feel bad about it
Feeds change over time. A source that used to post exactly what you wanted might drift into content you skip past every time it appears. Since you control the source list directly, unlike an algorithmic feed where you have limited influence over what gets shown, it's worth periodically reviewing and removing feeds that have stopped earning their place. This keeps the list lean and keeps the experience of reading it feeling worthwhile rather than like an obligation.
Pair it with a broader intentional approach
Building a chronological reading list is one concrete piece of a larger shift toward being more deliberate about how you consume information, without swinging all the way to disconnecting entirely. Our piece on digital minimalism for people who still want to know what's going on covers how a reading list like this fits into a broader, sustainable approach to staying informed without the fatigue that comes from ranked, engagement-driven feeds.
A note on why this beats bookmarking everything
A common alternative, bookmarking articles to read later or keeping dozens of tabs open, tends to accumulate guilt rather than get read, since there's no natural cadence pulling you back to it. A reading list organized by publish date, checked on a regular rhythm, does the opposite: it creates a light, sustainable habit rather than a growing backlog, which mirrors the same principle covered in our piece on chronological versus algorithmic feeds, just applied to your own personal reading rather than a social platform's main feed.
Set a rhythm that matches how much you actually publish-check
There's no universally correct schedule for checking a reading list, but it helps to pick a rhythm that matches how often your chosen sources actually publish, rather than checking constantly out of habit. A list built from a handful of weekly newsletters and slow-moving blogs might only need a glance every few days. A list that includes daily news sources naturally wants a daily check-in. Matching your rhythm to your sources' actual publishing pace keeps the list from ever feeling either stale or overwhelming.
Categorize loosely if the list grows
Once a reading list grows past ten or so sources, a light grouping, news, personal blogs, a specific hobby or interest, makes it easier to read selectively depending on how much time you have that day, without needing to abandon the chronological order within each group. This is a small structural addition, not a requirement, and it's worth adding only once a flat list actually starts to feel unwieldy rather than building it in from day one.