

Ask HN: good strategy to parse all that information - rhr

Greetings<p>I found myself not able to read everything I would like to read (books, blogs, whatever), I only add interesting stuff from good sources to my reading list but it is still overwhelming.<p>I figured I'd better design a strategy to tackle this and would like to get your input. What is your trick/strategy of parsing/absorbing this sea of knowledge available to us in this age?<p>Thanks
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petercooper
First, deem things that have been in your reading list for a certain time to
be unimportant and get rid of them. That's because they _are_ unimportant if
you can't even be bothered to read them.

Second, stop procrastinating and actually set some time aside to read several
of your items (or in the case of books, a few chapters). Put the time in and
you'll find you don't have too much to read - just not the concentration to
keep it up.

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rhr
appreciate your input.

you made some implicit assumptions about me which are wrong. I concentrate
well and do spend a lot of time to read, it just so happen that there is a lot
I would like to read.

I was hoping for some detailed strategies, the simplest example will be only
read title/summary/first line of each paragraph.

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petercooper
You could learn to speed read if your speed isn't as high as you'd like.
Initially this involves tricks like saying numbers or letters over and over
while reading so that you don't "speak" the words (even internally) which
slows you down. There's also a trick where you can use two fingers (at a third
and two thirds into the column of text you'd reading) and you jump your eyes
between them while moving down.

In terms of books, consider reading reviews or summaries that people make
online. Quite a lot of books have reasonable only summaries. These can help
you decide whether something is _worth_ reading. I'd say you need to be more
picky if your reading list is so large - don't feel too upset you didn't get
to read something, and focus on the awesome stuff you'll learn from the books
that _are_ worth reading :)

A trick that works for me with non-fiction books is to read the first and last
page of each chapter. This will give you enough info (if the book is written
well) to decide whether to read that chapter or not. It might seem like a
waste if you bought the book to be able to go through it in 15 minutes, but if
you weren't going to read it in time anyway... :)

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petercooper
Just noticed this on the front page: <http://zapreader.com/reader/>

