I love talking to folks who’ve had that “Wow!” moment when they start putting PostRank to work, and folks who’ve happily integrated filtering into their information workflows for some time. However, from time to time I still talk to folks who don’t use PostRank or any other information management tools other than an RSS reader (and sometimes not even that…).

Sure, a few don’t manage enough feeds to really need information management tools, but more often these folks do experience information overload from time to time; they just don’t trust the tools to still give them what they want.

I’ve seen their reasoning expressed a few different ways, but it boils to two things, which are actually pretty closely interconnected:

  • I don’t want to miss anything
  • I like to discover cool, new stuff.

I totally get that. I pay considerably more attention to my friends’ shared items in Google Reader than to many of my feeds. I also quite openly admitted to Colin that PostRank filtering isn’t necessary for everyone.

However, over time I’ve refined my perspective a bit, and come to realize that information management — and, more fundamentally, our chosen complements of information — isn’t just an all or nothing proposition.

Not all information is created equal.

So, for those who use PostRank and love it — huzzah! For those thinking of taking a more active role in taming information overload — c’mon in, the filtering’s fine! (Also, ask me anything!) For those who don’t want to miss anything, or who think filtering might make it harder to discover cool, new stuff (especially smaller traffic sites and such), here’s what I’m thinkin’…

There’s information you need to keep up with. Often it relates to your job or professional interests. And often the feeds you need to be subscribed to to keep up with that professional information are pretty high volume. Fortunately, those types of feeds (tech is the most obvious example here) also tend to represent a fair bit of information reporting redundancy.

These feeds are ripe for filtering. You’ll still get the best content that everyone’s talking about (or with which the audience is highly engaged, as we say in the biz), from breaking news to industry commentary, but you save plenty of time by not having to wade through minutiae and articles that have nothing to do with your needs or interests.

Then there’s information you kinda need to keep up with but also mostly just want to. Perhaps it pertains to a hobby you’re fairly passionate about. Or a charity you volunteer with. You want to know the important points of what’s going on in that sphere, and some of the smaller details, but the sky won’t fall if you miss something. In this case you’d set your filtering to a level that enables you to feel like you’re up to date, involved, and could converse intelligently on the topic with someone else. (And of course you can adjust the filtering level to find that osmotic comfort zone.)

And finally there’s stuff you’re not going to filter. Could be topics on which you absolutely need to know the nitty gritty (like something you’re researching or brand monitoring), or sites where filtering would be… poor form. I.e. you don’t filter your mom. Or your friends. :) And hey, unless your best friend’s name is Michael Arrington, chances are pretty good your friends’ blogs don’t fill up your RSS reader with dozens of posts a day. It’s also pretty likely that it’s a-okay to catch up on your friends’ adventures less regularly, like on Sunday morning while sipping your coffee.

Bottom line, whether you’ve got 5 feeds in your RSS reader or 500, we’ve all got information we need to keep abreast of, but more importantly we’ve got different kinds of information to keep abreast of. And I think realizing that and putting that perspective to work for you is the next step in overloaded folks becoming more productive.

Information management strategies and tools are still in their infancy, absolutely, but tech on the web moves at a lightning pace, so it’s improving all the time. And I think the most important thing for us to learn is to develop a solid understanding of what we need to know and why, so that we can then strategically apply the tools that will best help us manage these kinds of information.

Because the alternative is information overload, panic, counter-productive reactions, and not nearly enough relaxing with a coffee and Reading What Matters. :)