Ask HN: How Do You Optimize Your Intake of Information?
As someone with varied interests, I feel myself being pulled in a thousand different directions of things I want to know more about. This leads to a sense of anxiety as I realize life is much too short to pursue all my interests.
Ideally, I'd make peace with that fact and choose one or two parts of the Universe to really care about, but my mind just doesn't seem to work that way. I'm not even sure I'd want it to.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 73.1 ms ] threadCurrently, I'm learning deep reinforcement learning and I have to deal with computer programming and mathematical equations in my notes. Fortunately, emacs org-mode supports org-babel, latex and latex fragments. My learning got better with this experience.
The disadvantage is that the learning curve using emacs and org-mode is steep unless you use emacs and org-mode every day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten
So instead of worrying about intake, try to think about what you already know and go from there. Make it solid so you don't forget it, and just build upwards. After a while building a solid foundation you'll likely find that there aren't actually that much information you want to ingest, it just felt endless since you constantly went through the same similar concepts over and over.
I suffer from what you suffer from It's called Analysis Paralysis[0] or overthinking. You should go all chips in on what sets your soul on fire and focus on that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
I think I enjoy the discovery and research aspects and have romanticized visions of the end goal but end up never going deep enough before moving onto something else.
I studied and worked in journalism for a while. This was interesting work to me, because I could dive into a topic for a story and then move onto the next one. It helped to be a generalist. Perhaps you can blog about being a generalist and whatever interest you at any given time. Maybe something will really resonate that will lead to deeper dives.
Having "seasonal" interests or ensuring you can leave and return to interests has helped me. Living in the PNW, we have actual weather seasons. I love to ski in the winter, grow a garden in the spring, be on the water in the summer and go to football games in the fall. I get excited as these seasons change and can easily leave the last behind, knowing it will return.
Similarly, when I get into something, I try to make it manageable to dive back into it without starting from scratch by maintaining things or information I have collected along the way. The foundations will be there.
I think I recall reading somewhere this is a sign of intelligence; so embrace it ;)
Seriously, so often people seeking for smart answers about their minds when it’s just some biological/medical/chemical feature/issue.
as for the original question: a) as far as optimizing, I think that approaching the optimal state is less important than making improvements to a consistent performance ethic. Better to do something a little better every day than to miss days trying to do it better than everybody else. b) with information, I tend to focus on information that relates to a particular goal relevant to job performance or general wellbeing and then take notes on any new information and review prior notes relevant to the newest information in order to build an intuitive mental logical structure of the problem/goal and all of its moving parts. But since so few things are scientifically provable, I try to "bet" on certain things based on how more or less likely they are and an informal cost-benefit analysis
The most successful people (CEOs, billionaires, political leaders, senior managers) are usually somewhat competent in many areas, rather than an expert in one thing to the exclusion of all others.
- One's life is constrained in all sorts of ways. (By language, geography, family, acquaintances, genetics, accidents, illness, etc.) While we can try to break free from these constraints, it is often constraints that point us in interesting directions that we might not have otherwise entertained.
- Always have both long-term and short-term goals to help you point in a direction. It is okay to change these goals.
- After a certain age, certain topics will mean less to you. You will consider them either "solved," or simply older ideas that are being rehashed yet again.
- Occasionally reflect on how you find and approach new ideas. It is okay to throw out old ways of working to invent or discover new ways of working.
And finally, never forget that as each second goes by, you are literally a different person.[1] We are all inherently dynamic.
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/your-body-makes-4-million-cells...
I avoid social media, only read scientific articles or books. Quality > quantity
And taking what intake I take in and committing it to my notes ASAP, so I can offload it from my brain.
Don't follow every curious whim. Or do, and deal with the anxiety. There isn't a way around that.
Oof, that hits hard.
Do you think that the PhD makes sense for people who want to do research but not necessarily focus on publishing? Is this a contradiction in terms?
But even if you read 1000 things would you really know them? What does it take to know something? Well maybe the Feynman principle applies where you then have to explain it to a 6 year old and teach it. That takes focus and effort.
So instead pick one thing and focus 25% of your time on that thing and do it until it is done. Then pick something else. For the other 75% of your time do the other things you have to do or explore those thousand different directions.
But, yeah, you can't keep up with it all. Worse, with varied interests, you have more than one "all" to try to keep up with. You can't. You just can't. There's too much. It's not humanly possible to keep up with it all.
So you have to cheat. The way I cheat may not work for anyone else, but here's what I do: For general news, I look at Google News and Reuters. I look at headlines, and only read the article if I am interested in knowing more. (Often the headline tells me all I need to know.) For technical stuff, I look at HN. I just look at headlines unless I find the topic interesting. For hobbies, I have similar sites where I can just scan the new topics. This keeps me "up to date" while taking very little time.
For something like a book or a movie, I can read Wikipedia's summary if I want to know what it was about. A couple minutes vs two hours for the movie? (If I actually want to watch a movie, I'll watch it. If I just want to find out what it was about because I'm curious? Wikipedia.)
One thing I'm going to try is to switch back and forth between project mode and explore mode for fixed lengths of time. I'm not sure about the right lengths yet but the idea would be to have two weeks (or a month or whatever) where I let myself explore aimlessly, and then two weeks where I work on a specific personal project with specific goals.
I think I'd feel better for having accomplished some of the things I'd like to do, while hopefully not fighting too much against my own personality. Ideally I'll get into a good cycle where I am able to take the things I discover in explore mode and put them into practice in project mode. No idea if this will work though.