By Bob Walsh If you're not already using Google's new Desktop Search (Beta 2) released…

By Britt Parrott

It’s all too easy to let your newsreader quickly fill with feeds from sites you find interesting, only to realize weeks later than you don’t have the time nor the interest to scan half of them. It only takes a couple days of being offline for thousands of unread posts to tell you that something is not working.

It’s important to devise a method to make sure you get the most out of your feeds, and make sure your feeds don’t drive you crazy.

By Patrick Rhone

We tech nerds like to think we are prepared for every possible contingency that could come up during the course of our day. One only has to look at the “What’s in you bag?” stream at Flickr to know I am not alone in this statement. Need a box opened or a screw loosened? I have two multi-tools that can do the job. When I need to look up any personal contact’s phone number, I have at least three devices at my disposal. I can even take a picture with any one of four devices at a moments notice. See what I am getting at? I carry a lot of useful, yet redundant, wasteful and potentially unnecessary, stuff. So much so that my computer bag is less of a superhero utility belt and more of a ball of kryptonite that I swing around my neck.

In my continued efforts to carry less with me I have come up with some thoughts on how to attack this bane of our daily journeys.

We all experience moments of change in our lives. In can be a tragedy, like the folks in Louisiana coping with the effects of a major disaster, or it can be something good, like me getting married. Sometimes we force change and sometimes it’s forced upon us. Change comes in all shapes and sizes and can be a very disruptive force in our lives.

Even small changes, like a rip-roarin’ summer, can throw us out of balance. Sometimes it’s as simple as a routine, or good habit, being broken. If enough time has passed and enough disruption has occurred, it can be hard to get back on track. Part of a maintaining a good work/life balance is taking a break now and again. The problem lies in that sometimes, a break is such a disruption you can lose momentum in various aspects of your life.

In my experience the best way to get back to normal (or what feels like normal) is to take a holistic approach as opposed on taking on one aspect of your life at a time.

Below are a few steps that I’ve used in the past to help me back to normal after a significant break of routine or other change. My hope is that they’ll be helpful to you as well.

Awhile back I wrote a post about how to get back on track after time off. One of the things I mentioned was getting back to your regular schedule as soon as possible. While I still think this is a good idea in general, there are times when you simply can’t do that.

Like when you come back to almost 2,000 non-spam e-mails in your inbox.

I had to make a few adjustments this time, coming back from a two week vacation is a bit different than anything I’ve done in quite awhile. I used many of the tips I offered up before, but my biggest work-related hurtle was dealing with my e-mail. For that I took some special steps and I’m happy to say they worked splendidly.