I feel like if I stop, I'd lose out on something that'll be valuable.
I don't allow myself to bookmark "read later" pages again. I have to options: either I read the page here and now, devoting my full focus and attention, or it's gone forever.
I suggest you read about the power of focus, and also work on the damage that the fear of missing out is causing you. Yes, there are millions of interesting topics and insights out there, but you can only read one at the time. So ask yourself: "if I had to learn about one topic today (or this week), what would that be?". There is no later, there is no tomorrow... it's either now or never!
Survival of the fittest, you always compare it to the rest and if it's good enough, it goes in and something else comes out?
Do you have any suggestions on where to read about the power of focus?
I don’t know about the whole learning only about what you’re focused on approach. I’ve often found valuable insights and lessons in places I wouldn’t have looked at if I were optimizing everything with this level of zeal.
I used to save everything to "see later" and get lost like you described, but instead I now host a TiddlyWiki locally where I transform what I see in a wiki reference (or discard).
Doing that allows me to filter out things that are temporary (news, opinions, etc) from things that might be useful later (book recommendations, cool projects, etc).
The big trouble remains in timeboxing this practice so it doesn't take a lot and become a problem again.
(I think the biggest lesson I took from that is that most of what we see that is important is time-insensitive. So, doing this work of saving and categorizing over a batch of content in a weekend hour is just fine)
You can explain it away with 'the information age' and try to find a magic bullet organizational system [0] but it is ultimately a human problem.
For a practical person, the best bet is to try to orient reading towards a goal so that you bias the random walk into a desirable direction [1]. Or to simply have fun finding connections [2]. And maybe improve things for others along the way [3].
[0] e.g. 'David Allen - getting things done' [1] visual from 'Richard Hamming - you and your research' [2] 'Isaac Newton - "like a boy playing on the seashore"' [3] poem 'HWL - Psalm of Life'
Do you have a lot of tabs open right now? Close them all. Can’t because you might miss something you need to do? Write it on your todo list and then close the tab. Tabs and bookmarks aren’t your todo list.
Next, work on identifying your triggers that prompt this craving for new links and new information. Next time it happens, pause and ask yourself why it happened. Were you bored? Frustrated with something? Avoiding another task? Once you start identifying the triggers and circumstances, you can start replacing the autopilot impulse with some deliberate healthy choices.
Which is the final point: Choose an alternate activity to fill those times. It’s not enough to say you’ll stop doing something. You need to identify something else that you’ll start doing in those circumstances. It could be as simple as going to your bookmarks list and reading the first article at the top of the list instead of going to HN for new links. Or maybe it’s getting up and doing 5 minutes of light exercise. You need to have an alternate plan in place to execute when you start identifying your triggers.
You have to start to feel comfortable with the idea that you will miss out on 99.999999% of all the interesting things to know about in this life, much of it useful. You will be wrong and ignorant about some important things, and it will hurt.
All of that is OK, normal, and unavoidable. You just have to get there emotionally.
Cutting yourself off of the information hose shouldn't feel scary or inefficient, it should feel good or at least neutral. Your brain needs time to rest, absorb, and find satisfaction in things outside of learning.
I took some time going over my interests and decided which were more valuable to me than others, and then started cutting down on some of the ones that ended up lower on the list. While this may be a practical solution, I am still left pretty discontent with it, because the amount of things I am 'missing out on' is still unfathomably large. Improving the emotional and personal aspects of dealing with this is something that is harder to help with (and likely differs quite a bit between individuals), but I would hope that improving the current state of things is at least a fruitful starting point.
You've stored this pile of stuff, how often do you actually go into it and pull out something useful? How does that reward actually balance with the costs of acquisition and storage (in terms of your time and energy).
In my experience, articles or comments are never great pieces of information. The best ones will usually lead you to a book or documentary that they sourced the info from.
Delete the bookmarks, get the book.
Internalize that you're wrong. Most info isn't valuable at all. Regarding that which is, most has already been sifted from the dreck by others. Find a best books list that you vibe with and focus your completionist energy there.
Perhaps with all the time you spent reading barely-useful news you could have finished that certain book you've been postponing? Maybe you could have worked out more? Maybe you could have practiced that new skill? Maybe stopping doomscrolling will help your concentration?
Think about the tradeoffs you're doing.
I remember visiting the oldest library in California a couple years ago and it was just a small room. At that time, it was conceivable that one could learn all the knowledge available. Now it's just not possible. I think the trick is to figure out up front what you want to focus on and only consume things related to that.
>In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second,preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about petty issues,misinterpretations, slander. All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate
This is what I did:
- Rely more on my Twitter timeline. I follow <200 people and have my timeline show tweets in chronological order and I am able to "catch-up" once every day. I only check it in the morning.
- Subscribe to some link-aggregator newsletters, like hackernewsletter, that sends a weekly digest of interesting links every Friday.
- But most importantly, just come to terms with information overload that we all are living through right now and it's ok if you miss out sometimes. If it was important, you will come across it later. :)
For me that has been to start a blog, build an app etc.
Another approach is to go deep instead of wide. By that I mean, as you read, capture and take notes, start spending more time with your notes instead of capturing more.
That's a good book and I think you may learn something from it too.
This helps me in at least two ways:
I turn something that's mostly consumption into easy/frictionless content production.
And also, it encourages me to immediately assess the information I'm reading instead of lazily taking its correctness for granted.
Find a cause — what are you running from into addiction?
Either it’s some trauma or mental disorders or anything else, your investment in fixing this gets you much much higher returns than any anti-addiction techniques
Later on I will look over the titles and the main takeaways from the article.
Basically I just keep the links and if I ever think about the topic I search for it and then read.
OHIO - Only Handle It Once.