

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

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?
======
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 :)

------
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.

