
Ask HN: How Do You Optimize Your Intake of Information - reedwolf
As someone with varied interests, I feel myself being pulled in a thousand different directions of things I want to know more about.<p>This leads to a sense of anxiety and dread as I realize life is much too short to pursue all my interests.<p>Ideally, I&#x27;d make peace with that fact and choose one or two parts of the Universe to really care about, but my mind just doesn&#x27;t seem to work that way. I&#x27;m not even sure I&#x27;d want it to.
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onreact
Very good question. I'm also interested in a multitude of things and really
need "input" as I like call it to stay satisfied.

One way I moderate my information intake is by relying on some types of media
and hardware while ignoring others.

For example I never watch TV and I don't own a smartphone to keep my sanity
and moderate the onslaught of bad news and redundant fluff.

The evenings are usually "screen free" time when I try to reduce my
information intake but also read books on my favorite topics, sometimes
several at once.

I also read magazines that only cover topics I care about. I also use
crowdsourced filters like HN, Twitter etc. when online.

When you ignore day to day politics, celebrity culture, marketing (which 90%
of "content" is about) you end up only consuming what really matters.

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3dprintscanner
It's usually better to make a bad decision than no decision at all.

Really the internet makes it too easy to have too much choice by making it
easy to consume so much shallow information, and the real value comes from
cutting through the noise.

Consider exploring interests serially rather than in parallel and going deep
for a few months on 1 topic whether that seems the best or not.

