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Ask HN: How do you handle the information mass HN provides you with?

9 points by atomroflbomber ↗ HN
On HN I get very useful hints how to be productive every day. Moreover, I read a lot of highly interesting artlices, with information I want to keep in my mind.

How do you handle this overwhelming amount of information (next to just bookmarking it)? How do you get yourself to actually appyly the hints you get? How do you classify which information is actually useful and which is not?

Too often I read very interesting articles once, but later I will notice that I could have applied the information I got in certain situations, but did not as the article did not come in my mind in this situation. Do you build up a knowledge base or something like that?

Thanks

8 comments

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lutusp
This comes with experience. As we acquire more life experience, our ability to separate the wheat from the chaff becomes more refined. For example, when I was young, I ranked articles about physics and psychology the same. Now I know the difference.

The above is an obvious example, but it's just meant to show how experience tunes our filters and makes us more efficient at separating the jewels from the trash.

ASquare
I've repurposed a Trello Board into a knowledge base where I put all the interesting info Ive found

I also have another Trello board of to-dos This way, whenever I'm doing something where information on anything in the knowledgebase could apply, I link the card from the knowledgebase to the card for my to do.

Centralization & Context in one nice little package :).

atomroflbomber
Do you have something like a daily routine of reviewing what you bookmarked that day and how much time would you spend on that?

I tried it but spent far too much time on it...

ASquare
By definition, I read stuff and only links that I think will be useful make it into Trello Also, because the links are categorized well, it removes the need to keep going back and reviewing further etc - I only access the info as and when I need it.

The key is in organization & labeling It's not just a random pasting of links into the board I use different lists to categorize broad categories of content & cards as "sub categories" which makes it easier to go back to as and when i need it.

It helps that I always have Trello open in a browser so its quick and easy to paste stuff into the board wherever it belongs and move on with my life.

mhlakhani
I bookmark and post the links I like to my website; which allows me to browse through my reading history every now and then to refresh my memory of what I had read.

Adding search really helps.

touristtam
Not all information is relevant to you. Learn to make the difference and you should fine.
yabatopia
I rarely bookmark anything. Useful information goes straight to Evernote or Instapaper (for longer articles I want to read later that evening). And I tag every item in Evernote to speed up searching.
juleska
I categorize everything using Evernote :)