What about the GTD thing? When you stumble upon something spend no more than few seconds to decide whether you read it now, discard it, or put it into a sort of backlog. The important bit about the backlog is that it's not a "read it later" list of everything, instead you assign it a category. Eg this is related to a branch of biology, maths, computer science, algorithms, Linux io subsystem, etc.
Now don't try to go through the "read it later" list. It's hard to force yourself to do that, especially when it is full of things from a dozen of topics of interest. Instead, you make sure that when the time comes that you are interested in digging deeper on a specific topic you have these links/references readily available. I have a separate list of "topics of interest" and go through it from time to time. If I feel like I'm in the mood of digging deeper on distribution systems today then I open that category and see that there are some pending things I need to go through.
A system like roam research is very helpful at this. You can find free alternatives as well, like foam or obsidian. Check them out.
Then I can comeback to articles organized by keywords and take notes in obsidian when I'm digging deep.
I made a comment on tab overload post previously:
That said if you want to increase your ability to get more X-related data through your brain, you have to reduce consumption of non-X-related data - usually the first candidates to sequester are social platforms, and news websites.
I try to recognize whether what I'm looking at really matters to my goals, or if it is just idle curiosity driving me to read it. I still go down rabbit holes that aren't necessary, but I also simply shut the laptop off at some point and go do other things.
Ignore the subliminal advertising, btw. It just pays for the bandwidth /s
- I have 2 browser windows full of tabs. One window contains tabs relevant to my current projects or activities. The other has tabs that are not so, but seem interesting enough to triage.
- I try to clear off the tabs by bookmarking them with relevant tags (I love Firefox for this). Initially, before tags, I had a huge bookmarks hierarchy that I have backed up somewhere, but tags it is now. I try to keep the tags simply single words, covering all keywords (in combinations) I would be looking them up with desperately.
- In case I still feel inclined to read after bookmarking because it seems relevant, I move it to the first window. I know I will read it there based on its priority wrt other tabs there. Else, I close the tab, feeling assured I can find it in my bookmarks when needed.
- Once read, if I feel inclined to read more on the site, I add its rss feed to my reader. I use Feedbro Firefox extention on the desktop as well as an android app called spaRSS, keeping the same feeds on both via OPML export/import. Plus I may have clicked on many more pages on the site impulsively - need to process them too.
- I try to minimize social network feeds, preferring links/forwards from one-to-one chats where I know the person at the other end. Additionally, limit the time for Linkedin scrolling to bare minimum, just enough to distract myself. Almost zero Facebook and yet to open an Instagram account!
- Set time aside for deep-dives. They are planned and somewhat old-school with a pen and paper! I try to port to notes to my soft-notebook (scattered everywhere, slowly migrating to self-hosted Joplin). I prefer books if I can find them as they are highly condensed.
Despite above, its a slow and uphill process. Need to keep reminding myself to read less news :-)
Mine is slightly different. I use two separate browsers, one (firefox) for project/hobby focus and the other (chrome) for anything not related to project/hobby. I'm using different twitter, youtube, gmail, reddit, etc. accounts for each browser so I can still have the benefits from cookies.
Example: Using separate youtube accounts keeps programming recommendations separate from 3D modeling recommendations.
My firefox bookmark hierarchy became too large so I now throw it in a huge text file and custom tag them with metadata (I'm faster with my editor). I'll also be dumping any firefox bookmarks into a one/two level hierarchy and rely entirely on tags and the search bar, and my big text file of bookmarks.
I too use pen and paper and port them to my digital notebook. I make sure the notes are properly time stamped and contains enough information to keyword search.
Example: 2021-06-26_Blender_BlenderGuru_01.md
I use drawing programs to draw out any ideas. Some benefits are resizable canvas (if I ran out of space on paper I couldn't just resize it) and layers to organize and modify. I'm using clip studio paint because I also draw, but any drawing program like Krita would suffice.
One thing I learned was to keep information individually identifiable at all cost. I'll try to shove as much information in one line like filename or text line to maximize my search potential.
I haven’t solved the problem, but I find Twitter search very very valuable. I use it two ways:
1. Reverse search an article/topic and see how many believable people found it useful.
2. Build Twitter lists for topics and find people who are believable in the field and follow their recommendations.
Of course as I said, it doesn’t solve the problem but keeps me sane.
I find Twitter search an amazing tool.
Target a clear output -> define functions -> find the valuable inputs
(Ex: Become a top engineer (output) -> what's the core functions of the top engineering minds -> read great books, awesome tech blogs, talk/work with top minds...)
The biggest problem is to filter good stuff from the rubbish. Sometimes I read interesting stuff. Sometimes I waste my time reading stuff that reveals a rubbish.
I think the collaborative collection system implemented by awsomelist works pretty well. I'm asking myself if could exists something better, between the dopamine-injection-algorithm like HN and a static collections on links in markdown maintained with a version system.
The biggest benefit is to see this: if 1 year later I'm still interested in something, it's worth reading, if not, I can skip it with likely no loss.
The crucial thing for me is to recognise that I won't read everything that goes into that column and that's ok.
The icon is saved there for quick & easy access to read & delete later
It is. Someone who knows more about thermodynamics, information theory, or neurology than I could probably prove this rigorously.
Sometime I will go into the email and click on the links.
Some I will just read the title, some skim, some read the first few paragraphs and then skim.
some full read. Not trying to spend over 2 hours.