Ask HN: How to counter articles/videos hoarding?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku>

(I'm afraid I've just added to your reading pile...)

To the extent I have addressed this problem with some level of satisfaction if not success in clearing the lists:

- Our time for content is limited. Even for the maximally passive form of television, U.S. households peaked at just under nine hours per day (8h55m, in 2009-2010: <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...>). For books, you'll be lucky to find an hour a day, and quite possibly far less.

- Think about why you want to read something, and how it might benefit you. Much content, especially news and gossip, has a very short shelf life. For news, getting 5--10 minutes of headlines once or twice a day is almost certainly sufficient. I've all but entirely curtailed what was previously a heavy news-radio habit, though podcasts have substituted for much of that. Philosophy podcasts hit a sweet spot of long shelf life, topical relevance by way of illuminating current events, whilst not wallowing excessively in current-news-cycle topics. Otherwise, entertainment, learning new skills, awareness of the world, topics of mutual group interest (family, work, friends, intellectual circles) might all be motivators.

- Keeping tabs on what you read, watch, and/or listen to and how valuable it seems to you after the fact can be useful. Some sort of media diary (perhaps part of a bullet, OrgMode, or Obsidian journal, Zettelkasten, etc.) might be useful.

- I've come up with a very informal concept I call BOTI (best of the interval), which is based on a round-robin / circular file concept. Roughly, I note the top ten or so items I've read within the past week / month / year, and bubble the best of a shorter interval to the next longer one. Increasingly I'm steering toward longer periods and shorter lists, but those tend to be pretty solid.

- Topic-of-interest + foreign language is often a useful value-multiplier, if you happen to be learning (or brushing up on) a foreign language. E.g., foreign-language news gives more utility than mother-tongue news, all else being equal.

- A group which is addressing material together can be a great motivation: a book club, research group, class, family reading time, etc. This isn't always possible, but it's one way to socially create and sustain interest.

- An awful lot of content which looks like it might be interesting, often based on headline or title, grievously under-delivers. Titles which are simultaneously vague and grandiose can almost certainly be ignored. "This Changes Everything" is my canonical example (See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35278745>). Likewise any clickbaity title hacks --- several are mentioned though you'll need to scroll about halfway through this article to find them: <https://venngage.com/blog/7-reasons-why-clicking-this-title-...>).

- In the case of information overload, the most useful thing to have is a cheap, no-regrets, low-cognition discard function. Unbiased would be a nice feature to have as well. Randomly striking items from your list is probably an effective method. The inverse of that is...

There's no such thing.

a manageable list

Do you enjoy managing lists enough that that's what you want to do with your free time?

Good luck.