
Ask HN: How do you prioritize things to read? - alikhtm
There are so many great articles posted in Hackernews every day that worth reading. Plus if you are a developer you have to read a lot of articles about new techs and frameworks every week. Also there are enormous books about technical and non-technical subjects that we should read to upgrade our minds.<p>I&#x27;ve been struggling prioritizing articles, news and books to read. there are so many folders left on my desktop with bunch of pdf files, named &quot;To Read - X&quot;. Or for example so many tabs of blogs and posts that I wanted to read, left on my browser. Of course I did well in organizing them, so I used a tab manager to create folders of tabs containing tens of them.<p>So, how do you manage and prioritize your to-read things? Maybe my problem is that I should select less things to read and be more strict in selecting them. Or maybe I should limit the amount of things to read and do not add more things to get everything read. I don&#x27;t know which one is the best solution. If you&#x27;ve had similar problem please let me know how did you get your solution for it.
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khannavid
As a lazy person, I know that I never gonna read as much articles/books that
some other folks read in their time. I also want to be among the best at my
field. The only way around this situation, is to choose my reading list
wisely. I have a limited time and there's unlimited options to read. I think
this approach has been worked for me.

How I choose my books? I read extensively about their reviews. And I don't
force myself to finish a bad book!

How do I choose my articles? I have a trello board for it! In my trello board
I list every promising article I seen around the web. I list these articles
based on their subjects. When I have time to read something I look at all the
options I have in a certain category and I choose what seems to be the best
and/or most relevant article among them.

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vijayshankarv
Don't worry too much about prioritization if your goal from reading is to
learn. Set aside some time and then pick whatever article/book you most feel
like reading and just get going. If it bores you, then stop and move on to the
next one.

For interesting articles, take notes using a system that works for you.
Progressive Summarization and Zettelkasten are good ideas.

Over time, you will realize that most articles and books are not worth the
time investment to deeply read them and get quicker at skimming to get the
gist.

Some useful links:

Better note-taking misses the point
-[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQ...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQQeQWk4Dbc)

Gutting books -
[https://twitter.com/varsha_venkat_/status/110774091578163609...](https://twitter.com/varsha_venkat_/status/1107740915781636096)

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giantg2
I would cut down on the number of stored articles. If you haven't read it in 1
year, is it really that useful?

I prioritize based on my needs and then on my wants. So I will read articles
relating to work and stocks first. Then I will read articles or books related
to my hobbies.

I let books sit on my shelf indefinitely, although I usually get to any I buy
pretty quickly.

I try not to bookmark articles or blogs unless it has some specific/unique
knowledge like a recipe that I know I will want to find later and won't be
easy to google.

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markus_zhang
I tend to narrow my focus. Current focus is PyQT, Five eyes intelligence
community and social casino. I need to further reduce them to more actionable
focuses.

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verdverm
Night stand, and also peer comment about not prioritizing

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dredmorbius
Zettelkasten / POIC.

A reading journalish thing.

