I read a lot of blogs. It’s just fascinating what’s people come up with—great for learning, both for work and for fun. For the longest time, I kept a Notion list of my favorite ones (like Chip Huyen’s and Lil’Log), and I’d manually check them for updates every week or so. It was… not great. Easy to forget, and kind of a chore.

At the same time, my inbox was getting crowded with newsletters—some I liked, some I forgot I subscribed to—and it all started blending together with work emails, receipts, spam, and the occasional chaos. I kept wishing there was just one quiet place that would let me know when new blog posts or daily newsletters came in.

Enter RSS.

So, what’s RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a way for websites to broadcast updates. You use an RSS reader to subscribe to those updates—whether it’s a blog, a newsletter, or a news feed—and everything shows up in one clean, focused space.

No refreshing, no checking 10 tabs. Just your stuff, when it’s new.

Newsletters, without the inbox mess

I love newsletters. I really do. But they don’t mix well with inbox chaos. Getting a thoughtful Sunday Substack next to a security alert or a package delay email just kills the vibe.

With RSS, you can read your newsletters without them ever touching your inbox. I use Feeder.co, and it actually gives you a personal email address just for this. You use it to subscribe to newsletters like normal, but they land in your reader instead of your Gmail. It feels like a superpower.

Subscribing is so simple

This part surprised me: you don’t need to hunt for RSS buttons or know what you’re doing. Just paste the blog’s URL into Feeder (or any other reader), and it figures it out for you. No setup, no fiddling. Done.

There are other great readers too—Feedly, Inoreader, NewsBlur, Feedbin—but Feeder hit the right balance of simplicity and features for me. Especially for getting those email-based newsletters in.

Escaping the algorithm

Most of us get news through feeds—LinkedIn, Instagram, X—and those feeds are driven by algorithms that care more about engagement than relevance. It’s easy to lose an hour and come away with nothing meaningful.

RSS is the opposite. You decide what you want to follow. No suggested content, no likes, no hot takes. Just the stuff you care about, in the order it came out.

If you read blogs, enjoy newsletters, or just want a calm space to follow your interests, RSS is 100% worth a try. I wish I had found it earlier.

By the way, you can subscribe to this blog via RSS too. Just drop the URL into your reader and you’re good to go.