Right, RSS is great for low volume stuff that you don't want to miss.
I do have a way of using it productively with high-volume sites. Specifically, I read some of reddit via RSS. Sometimes I go deep into a project, and avoid distractions for quite a while. At the same time, I don't want to miss out on the zeitgeist. So I set up an RSS feed that takes the top n items over a certain period - for example, the top 3 weekly stories from proggit.
Then when I'm done the project I can go back and see what important items from the group discussion I've missed. Basically just turn a constant stream into a small amount of the best content that I don't want to miss.
You just add .rss to the url you get when browsing, before the args.
Then I used yahoo pipes to extract the top 3 items from that feed. I take the output of the yahoo pipe as input for my RSS reader, which collapses duplicates. I used google reader, so I didn't even need to open up my RSS reader for the top items to accumulate.
I do have a way of using it productively with high-volume sites. Specifically, I read some of reddit via RSS. Sometimes I go deep into a project, and avoid distractions for quite a while. At the same time, I don't want to miss out on the zeitgeist. So I set up an RSS feed that takes the top n items over a certain period - for example, the top 3 weekly stories from proggit.
Then when I'm done the project I can go back and see what important items from the group discussion I've missed. Basically just turn a constant stream into a small amount of the best content that I don't want to miss.