
Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN? - sbmthakur
A lot of good content is posted on HN. However, I am unable to read&#x2F;watch most of it. I do use Pocket to store articles for future reading. But the list gets big too quickly and I find it overwhelming to finish all of it.<p>Any specific technique or tool you use to manage all this content?
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exolymph
I mainly read the comments, rarely the articles themselves. (That's not to say
that I don't read articles in general — I do, but I mostly find them via
Twitter.) Usually, I'm much more interested in what the community has to say
about a given topic or issue than I am about the object-level news.

~~~
jvzr
Same. I use hckrnews.com to have an up-to-date list of recent topics discussed
on HN, quickly skim it for headlines that stand out, but mostly focusing on
highly-commented posts (50+ when in the morning, 20+ later on in the day), and
I read comments first.

~~~
galfarragem
I would also add:

[http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/)
(HN daily top 10 links archived since 2010)

[https://hnews.xyz/](https://hnews.xyz/) (HN with thumbnails -> deeper HN
skimming)

------
gtirloni
I don't have a technique to manage all this content. I've been working on the
opposite. Here are some disconnected thoughts.

First, realize you don't need (or can't) known everything. There's too much
content out there. You'll get overloaded and burn out.

Not everything is useful to you. Sure, it's always good to read about things
outside one's bubble to get new insights, but that will occur naturally if
you're a curious person. Fight that urge.

After trying to minimize the amount of things that go into your to-read
bucket, you'll notice you still have too much to read. Filter again and be
okay with missing something. When you actually have an issue in front of you,
you'll know how to find the solution. No need to cram everything into your
brain.

~~~
exolymph
> Filter again and be okay with missing something.

Yes, this is key. You just have to accept that there is vastly more
interesting material in the world than you can ever possibly digest. Then be
very discerning about what you pick.

------
andyjohnson0
I don't even try to read most of it. Just let it flow past.

On a work-day morning while I'm drinking my coffee and waiting for my brain to
boot-up, I go through the current pain page and open the comment pages for any
interesting posts/articles. I read the comments to see what the community here
thinks, and then maybe flip to the article itself. The decision to do this is
mostly based on how the comments look, so I'm using them to get a precis, but
sometimes I go to the article anyway. Then I dip-in several times during the
day, treating the main page like a twitter-style firehose. Just snack on a
couple of articles and reactions, then back to work.

I sometimes read HN at the weekend - when in my experience it has a different
vibe, with more thoughtful, longer content. Then I find myself spending more
time on the articles and less on the comments.

I mostly just try to let what I read filter into my kind of ambient awareness
of HN-type subjects, rather than remembering it. I occasionally flag something
a favourite, and even less occasionally bookmark something, but I very rarely
go back to old content as there just isn't time.

------
thisisit
Okay this might get weird.

I was (am) kind of perfectionist. So I used to feel pressured by the sheer
amount of content and feeling what I was missing. I have been doing
mindfulness for a month now and it has helped me come to terms with this
overload of information.

Now, I don't get bogged by the fact that I missed reading something.
Previously I used to read every topic possible - cryptocurrency, finance,
technology, blog posts or writeups - even about technology which I am sure I
am never going to work on. Now I focus on stuff that really matter to me -
finance (mainly personal finance) and technology. Others, like politics etc I
simply ignore.

------
latte
I use the RSS feeds ([https://hnrss.org/](https://hnrss.org/)) for the HN
front page and also for the Show HN (I find the average quality of all Show
HNs to be surprisingly high - ever of those that don't make it to the front
page).

To read the feed, I use Feedly, that fetches pictures from the linked pages
that sometimes give a bit more context about the submissions.

~~~
throwaway2016a
This is almost exactly what I do. I recommend it. Except I use a feed direly
on HN... I didn't use an third party scripts or websites. I can't figure out
how to get the URL out of feedly though.

As a pro tip for anyone reading. Pressing "j" will go to the next article and
"k" will go back one so you can really quickly skim headlines.

One pet peeve is that the RSS feed doesn't contain anything useful in the body
so when skimming you have to reply entirely on title.

------
imron
Ignore most of it!

In the grand scheme of things, most of the 'good' content really is not that
good. It might be interesting - or more interesting that what you should be
working on, but a year from now most of it will be irrelevant.

You can save a lot of time by ignoring it.

------
danellis
Why do you think you need to finish all of it? There is a lot of content out
there that you haven't seen, and I presume you don't worry about that. The
fact that some of it has been posted to HN shouldn't mean that not seeing it
suddenly becomes a problem.

------
ab071c41
I use an RSS feed, skim the headlines for what's interesting, and either read
it then or save it to pocket. This also means that after a few days, I end up
with 1000+ articles, but I can skim them 100s at a time.

------
jgtrosh
A life-long practice from lower-tier websites like Reddit of seeing way too
much content go past to ever try and catch up with everything. When I was
young and 9gag came to existence I remember being able of seeing everything
that was posted by checking it out once a day. I learned to give up back then,
and now on a vastly more interesting website like HN I enjoy finding
interesting bits every day but don't expect to know about everything that
happened.

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shahbaby
I try to limit myself to things that actually pertain to me.

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dotdi
In the morning, I get a coffee and open up all the interesting articles into
tabs on hckrnews.com, which I then stack (using Vivaldi browser).

I'll go through these tabs during the day when I need a break or have some
downtime. The HN tab stack is helpful because I know the other open tabs have
something to do with work.

If I'm intrigued by what I read in the article, I'll read comments on HN, but
often I completely ignore them.

------
DoreenMichele
_Any specific technique or tool you use to manage all this content?_

I am medically handicapped. I spend a lot of time convalescing. HN helps
minimize the degree to which I go stir crazy while doing so.

I don't recommend it as a method.

I know from long experience that the assumption is that those doing a lot of X
are overachievers to be emulated and their perceived accomplishments to be
aspired to. Such perceptions aren't necessarily accurate.

------
mkbkn
I made an IFTTT recipe that would email me the links to the HN story based on
specific keywords in its title like "learn", "how to", "books" etc. And I
check my emails mostly once a day, so by the time I click the link in the
email, most of the time, I would find a good number of quality comments to
read and enjoy.

------
ochronus
I also use Pocket - each evening I go through my RSS reader (HN is included)
and click what looks interesting, I skim the article (10 secs) and if it
indeed looks interesting/useful/valuable I save it to Pocket and I add a
label. Labels help me to revisit Pocket in a more systematic way and I also
re-filter Pocket from time to time.

~~~
greenmana
Can you or anyone recommend some good RSS readers these days? Thanks.

~~~
LVB
If you happen to run your own server, give [https://tt-rss.org](https://tt-
rss.org) a try. It is straightforward and has all the essentials I expect in
an RSS reader. There are mobile clients too. I’ve used it for a number of
years with good results and almost no maintenance.

------
teaneedz
I follow @newssyc20 and @newssyc300 Twitter bots (there's also 50, 100, 150).

They deliver the HN headlines that reach those many points to my Twitter TL.

[update] Then, if I click through to the HN post from the tweet, I read the
first few comments at the top and then the bottom most comments. Finally, if
I'm still interested, I'll read the actual article.

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gamapuna
I use hn.algolia, if there's some topic I am interested in searching there
usually fives me the most relevant HN link

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dwaltrip
This reminds me of the explore vs exploit dilemma:

[https://joshkaufman.net/explore-exploit/](https://joshkaufman.net/explore-
exploit/)

I'm still working on understanding this trade-off better... It seems to be a
pretty good lens for looking at things, though.

------
msutherl
Skim, read comments, and for things I want to remember, add them to an
appropriate Are.na channel.

For longer articles I want to read eventually but know I won't get to for a
long time, I use the "Save this page" feature of Inoreader[2].

Since I've started using Inoreader, I haven't gone back to any of these
articles, but I'm ok with this – I tend to review the cache every 6-months to
a year when I happen to have uninterrupted free time (like between jobs or on
vacation). Previously I had Are.na channels called "To Read 1", "To Read 2",
and so on.

[1] [https://are.na](https://are.na)

[2] [https://www.inoreader.com/](https://www.inoreader.com/)

------
weego
I learned very quickly that most of it isn't actually very good (ie its
outside my sphere of understanding so if it's well written it can seem good
when actually later you come back to it and realise it was garbage) or
relevant to me so I ignore most of it.

------
rayalez
Consider subscribing to the weekly email newsletter of the most upvoted posts
[1], or finetune an RSS feed [2] (you can filter posts with 100+ upvotes for
example, or only Show HN posts, or whatever).

If you're using mastodon, you can follow my HackerNewsBot [3], or the same
thing on twitter [4].

[1] [https://hndigest.com/](https://hndigest.com/)

[2] [https://hnrss.org/](https://hnrss.org/)

[3]
[https://mastodon.social/@HackerNewsBot](https://mastodon.social/@HackerNewsBot)

[4] [https://twitter.com/newsyc100](https://twitter.com/newsyc100)

------
0x54MUR41
I have no specific technique to manage all of good contents on HN. If I find a
post or thread that has a good content, I usually upvote or favorite it. But,
as you said before, it will grow bigger and bigger as a list on your "upvoted
submission" section profile.

I think using Pocket or other bookmarking tool is one of the method because
you can give a tag or keyword to your bookmarked content (searchable).

Well, at the end, I agree with someone who said you don't need know
everything. Our brains have a limit. Choose the topic that suits with you.

------
n17r4m
Firefox mostly, but I get what you are asking for. Ultimately my brain, I know
I should bookmark more great links, but I guess in the end I just hope I
remember them.

Besides that, just have my own forked merge of exolymph's and m4tthumphrey's
replies.

As in another discussion, it's just part of life..
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16338723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16338723)
. If it wasn't HN, it would be slashdot, or ars, or medium, or searching deep
into the web for ghost hosts.

~~~
n17r4m
Excuse me for replying to myself, but on a different topic. What ever happened
to bookmarklets?

LPT for those that enjoy going insane by reading things at super speed:
[http://spritzinc.com/get-spritz](http://spritzinc.com/get-spritz) . [no
affiliation]

------
flear
I use [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) as an interface.

Depending on how much time I have, I filter by Top 10 / Top 20 or "All posts".

------
mark212
Liberal use of the “hide” button. If the headline doesn’t grab me (or I know
it’s a topic I find tedious) click hide and it disappears. Come back to the
page later in the day and see what’s fresh, repeat.

There’s enough great stuff that I wouldn’t find any other way to make it worth
repeat visits.

And often the comments are much more valuable, like when someone has a link to
a website or SaaS or software and the comments are like “this sucks you should
try X” and goes off in exhaustive detail as to why that person holds that
conviction.

------
dpkrjb
I share to pocket on my phone and create a backlog of interesting articles.
Since they're cached I'm able to read some of the lighter ones on the tube to
and from work. Worth noting that my backlog grows faster than I can read it.

Unlike the top comment on this post I mainly dont pay attention to the
comments apart from an initial glance and I only save the article link to
pocket. That's the opposite of my browsing habits on Reddit where I usually
pay attention to the comments more than the articles.

------
kjullien
Watch the headline,

Like it ? Skim the article with interest. Read the comments.

Meh ? Skim it fast. Read the comments.

Nope ? Read the comments.

My brain works in a very strange manner, I cannot chose what it remembers, it
does that for me, and most of the time what I will remember won't be that
important or useful to me, since I have no real control over that I like to
learn and discover as much as I can in the hopes I might remember something
interesting to pop out in a conversation and such.

------
slake
I just scan the titles on Feedly, Open the titles I find interesting. Read the
ones I really find interesting and bounce out of the ones where the titles
were interesting by the item is actually boring.

But I can't catch up if I miss even one day. So there are periods where I have
a 1000 unread items and I just skip them.

------
placebo
same way I manage other things, which is sort of the opposite of what one
might do in SEO management - I drop the long tail, and only focus on what's
left. Of course the contents of what's left depends on your personal
priorities of what you find to be important. Now if that also becomes too
much, rinse and repeat.

------
andersonnnunes
My feed reader uses a massive blacklist to filters headlines. I only click on
headlines that appear interesting to me.

------
voltooid
I open up links to articles that seem interesting to me at that moment, skim
through and find out if it is indeed still interesting, leave it in a browser
tab to come to later. I come back to my browser tabs and ask myself if I still
am interested in the article. Close it if the answer isn't a resounding yes.

------
eimg
RSS reader. I use Feedly to subscribe HN altogether with dozen of other
sources and receive somewhat around a hundred posts daily. I read through all
headlines. But only go through a few that really interest me.

It doesn't help much with filtering content but it help you make sure you
don't miss anything interesting.

------
enraged_camel
I first filter front-page submissions based on number of comments.

Out of those, I focus mostly on things that will be immediately useful or
relevant, and avoid reading stuff that merely piques my curiosity.

With these two criteria applied, I find that I only have two or three
submissions per day to read. It's quite nice.

------
usrme
I also use Pocket, but when the list grows to be too big (around 10 items or
so) then I will not consume any more articles by way of Feedly or Hacker News
until the list is groomed.

I find this to work well for me as I have an incentive to keep my Pocket empty
or at the very least not overwhelmingly filled.

------
seba_dos1
RSS reader (self-hosted CommaFeed), quick glance at comments when a headline
catches my eye, then opening the article or not, most likely in a new tab to
check out later. With those two big filters, the amount of stuff that's
actually interesting to me seems manageable.

------
JabavuAdams
Don't. It really doesn't matter.

Productivity (if that's your metric) is limited by your ability to continually
make good decisions. You can't integrate and apply all the knowledge in any
useful sense. Trying to probably makes you less productive and/or happy.

------
ninjakeyboard
If you read hackernews from emacs, it doesn't matter if you read everything.
Everyone around you will fear you.
[https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el](https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el)

------
eqtn
I use feedly to manage rss. I like to read comments about the article more
than the article itself.

------
AncoraImparo
There isn't really that much good content anymore... So it really is easy
nowadays. A few years ago I used to constantly have to be saving stuff to read
later... but now it is constantly just non-tech related crap, unfortunately.

------
ninjakeyboard
Catch the highlights! There are some tools that will send you eg newsletters
with the top items. You can't read everything! Better to both consume and to
also produce. Doing one or the other too much is worse than doing the right
amount of both.

------
fsloth
I ignore most of the articles posted. I get this intuitive "itch to read" when
I see an interesting topic and that is a sufficient filter to me. It's not
like this is important, anyway, it's mostly only news and blogposts :)

------
thinkjson
I use the Hacker News trigger in IFTTT to filter out top articles related to
TypeScript, Python, or Go, and send them to my private slack.

[https://ifttt.com/hacker_news](https://ifttt.com/hacker_news)

------
m4tthumphrey
My technique is to simply keep checking back every few hours and never go past
page 1.

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bionsystems
I skim quickly through articles at work, and those I think may be interesting
I email them to myself so I can read them in the evening.

I never read any of those in the evening. But for some reason I keep doing the
above. :)

------
lamerman
[http://www.waybackhn.com/](http://www.waybackhn.com/) \- it shows you only 30
most popular articles for this day.

------
matt_the_bass
Mostly I just reminisce about getting then monthly print version. Those were
the curated days when I didn’t need to worry about missing an interesting
article.

------
book_mentioned
Maybe try a pull method rather than push - just use
[https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) search!

------
tebugst
I keep checking titles of submission. If it seems appealing, then go through
comments. If initial comments are interesting then go through original
article.

------
j45
You don't.

I try to only read things that are applicable to what I'm trying to do now.

The rest, if interesting or useful later, can be bookmarked using tools like
diigo, pocket, etc.

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partycoder
I think it's not about "good" or "bad" but rather relevant or irrelevant. What
is relevant to you is in part for you to decide.

------
pm
I read through half and then bookmark everything. I have years of articles to
go through. So, I don't actually manage it, and really need to.

------
im_dario
I use
[http://serializer.charlieegan3.com/](http://serializer.charlieegan3.com/) as
filter.

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nippples
I ignore most of it.

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prorsum
I've created a slack channel and configured an RSS reader that periodically
sends new posts to that channel. I find it quite useful because it is push
model rather than pull, which avoids switching context just to check if there
is anything interesting. Another positive thing posts remain in the slack
which allows sharing, threading, pinning, favouriting, searching etc.

