HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you remember what you read on HN? (And if so, why/how?)

5 points by msohcw ↗ HN
I read HN on a regular basis, spending anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours reading the articles shared. But I quickly realise that I rarely really remember all of what I read. I typically mentally summarise an article and what I got from it at the end, but often times I can forget it the very next day thanks to the huge influx of new news. What do you typically do? Is this an example of how we can appear to be productive, but are actually just cyberloafing?

3 comments

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shanelja
For me, this is a news site, that I can come here to learn, expand my horizons and then most importantly, forget it all, leave and go back to my work is important to me - if I spent too long thinking about what I read here I wouldn't get any work done. Also, this is a 'news' site, except for recurring articles about events (such as the summer of endless Apple vs Samsung articles) news comes one day and goes as quickly.
pbateman
I remember what I learn more if it's relevant to work I'm actually doing.

So if, for example, I'm thinking about landing pages and I read some links on HN about building better landing pages then it gets lodged in my brain and I learn something worthwhile.

If on the other hand I'm just procrastinating I don't remember much or extract much value from being here.

One of the best uses I've found for HN is searching for past links related to what I'm working on; there's a lot of value in the old comment threads.

msohcw
A lot of the time I read interesting stuff that's perhaps tangentially relevant, but not directly relevant to what I'm doing at the moment. And then I get stuck with this annoying problem of not really remembering what was there when I actually do need that article/advice/news/knowledge. Your tip on searching past links is useful. Thanks :)