Improving productivity

[Guest JoelS]

Just wanted to pass on a comment from VIC re 'reading' that I have found to particularly helpful. I followed this suggestion and can report a much better handle on information flows. Then again, I'm fairly computer inept, so you're all probably streets ahead of me/already doing something like this...

 

"Perhaps more important than WHAT you read, is HOW you read. This is likely obvious to many of you, but for those of you that are not using an aggregator or e-reader, i highly recommend it. I use netvibes (the free version) but there are a couple out there. If you're not familiar with the technology, basically you can set it up so that every website / newspaper / blog etc etc has a small window on one website where just the headlines display - you can adjust how many headlines you want from each source. In this way you can basically check new stories on all of the websites you care about on one webpage. If a headline catches your eye, just click through. If it doesn't ignore it.

 

Sites I have set up like this in no particular order are Crossing Wall Street, Abnormal Returns, The Brooklyn Investor, CSinvesting, Barel Karsan, Oddball Stock, Whopper Investments (although he seems to be posting more on VIC these days  ), Bronte Capital, Capital Observer, Wexboy, Greenbackd, GuruGocus, market folly, Vitaliy Katsenelson, Gannon on Investing, Punch Card Investing, Greg Speicher, Heresy Value, OTC Adventures, the red corner, MicroCapClub, Musings On Markets, Fool.com, ValueWalk, Morningstar, MOATOLOGY, Kerrisdale Capital, Fundoo Professor, Base Hit Investing, Value Uncovered, MagicDiligence, Valueprax, & value and opportunity. I am always looking to add more because it takes almost zero extra time to quickly glance at the headlines.

 

Some of these have 500 headlines a day and I don't really keep up with. Some have one headline a month. Some I read every day. But the point is, it takes 30 seconds to know what all of them are doing.

You can also set up feeds from sec.gov in the same manner so that all of your portfolio companies are on one page, and any time a new filing hits you are alerted.

 

You can also set it up so that any google etc searches you may be interested in are automatically updated... for example I have a running search for "odd lot tender offer" and "management buyout" as well as others that (hopefully) uncover random little corners of the market that might provide opportunities."

[augustabound]

I also use Netvibes.  I miss my iGoogle homepage though but that's more for the other widgets like sports scores etc.

 

I just learned about page2rss.com .  Sometimes Netvibes can be picky on what it thinks is a feed rather than a basic webpage. 

Basically you can turn any page into a recognizable feed and it will send changes on the page to Netvibes.

 

[siddharth18]

Thanks for the suggestion! This is much better than individually checking each blog and also a better way to sort and organize this massive flow of information.