Ask HN: How do you balance between gaining knowledge and applying knowledge? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you balance between gaining knowledge and applying knowledge?

3 pointsashitvora4 comments

Earlier I used spend an hour or so every morning to go thru my Google Reader.

Then I joined Twitter. It was difficult to keep up with all the tweets.

Then I joined Hacker News. There's so much useful info posted here but now I restrict myself to only go thru posts on HN's home page and my submissions (if somebody has commented anything. I wish there was a way to get notified via email when somebody comments on your post / question).

Now there's one more - Quora. Again a very good source of info.

It seems I almost spend half of my day on all these. There's hardly any time left to apply these knowledge.

I'm sure few others might also be facing the same problem.

How do you guys manage this?

I ususally find myself working in bursts. I have been on the knowledge gathering burst for the past few months. I went all crazy, bought books, read through most of them. Read HN posts etc.

But now I am kind of getting sick of it. I am now at a stage where I don't want to be on HN. And I am shifting into application mode. Now I will be focusing on applying what I have been gaining. Once I get sick of it, I will switch back to gaining mode.

So I would suggest, if you know that you also have a similar pattern (of working in bursts) then just do it until you get sick of it and then shift to application mode.

Yes. I am now in lockdown mode. No Twitter, Facebook, Quora till Monday.

Checking HN only once in 2 hrs. Google Reader only once a day.

Let's see how this experiment goes. :)

Do what Tim Ferriss says: Go on an "information diet". You don't need to have all the news. If it's really important you'll hear it anyway.

Relax.

Also for Twitter: Follow real people only and only those that don't tweet 100 times per day.

yea. I used to follow like 300+ users. One day I went to my twitter account and unfollowed everyone but those who tweeted only tech stuffs and only few tweets a day.

That really helped.

Thanks :)

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