I don’t want your cat to interrupt my work

I love cats as much as the next guy, but a new cat picture posted on a blog is not a good reason to interrupt my current train of thought. Right now, I’m writing this little article. If a box popped up saying “3 new blog postings” or “SomeSite: Here’s my cat”, that would derail this sentence as I’m writing it and take a few seconds to shift back and forth between the trains of thought.

Most feed reading programs have taken many cues from email programs, and that includes some kind of popup that shows you that new items have arrived. Is it really that important to see the items right now? Unnecessary distractions can weigh down your productivity.

I prefer to conciously decide “I’m going to take a look and see what’s going on in the world”, and then actively open up my news program. I don’t have popup notification on my mail program, because even email can wait a little while.

For this reason, Zesty News doesn’t have a new item notification feature yet. It just hasn’t been a priority for me. if people start asking, I’ll certainly add a notification feature.

I’d be curious to hear from others who do use the popup notification feature from other newsreaders.