
Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload? - coned88
This may seem like a silly question but it&#x27;s something that&#x27;s been affecting me for a while now.  With the sheer amount of information available in the world today I have simply become overwhelmed.  My mind is in a constant racing state.  It&#x27;s calm but not calm if that makes sense.  While I could very well be thinking about nothing or something specific like writing this message.  My mind seems to have multiple levels. One of which is directed to what I am actively doing and one below it which seems to process information in a never ending manner.  I am not actively thinking about these things but it&#x27;s there.  Articles and books to read, shows to watch, things to do in my personal life and at work. Career advancement.  All of these things just never stop but I could be calm. I can sleep fine, they don&#x27;t cause active anxiety.  They just linger in the background.  Shooting around saying me me.<p>It&#x27;s getting exhausting. I like to be informed.  I like to know what people are talking about and like to be able to have a point of view.  I like to have an opinion and be able to argue it. But I have realized it&#x27;s just getting to be too much.<p>Currently my instapaper account has some 800 articles I have yet to read.  Kindle has about 10 books I want to read. pinboard account has about 100 unread articles most of which are small books.<p>Any advice on what I should do? Do I just purge them?
======
hanoz
1\. Give up news. Not necessarily Hacker News, although it's an idea, but
mainstream newspaper, television, radio etc. news. It's remarkably easy to cut
out completely in one fell swoop and can make an enormous difference to your
mental real estate. You won't miss it, you won't miss out (the big stuff will
find its way to you regardless) and it can actually be an entertaining
challenge to be religious about avoiding it in its ambient forms.

2\. Beware the rabbit hole. Whenever considering following a tangential link
or taking time out from work for some infotainment diversion, fully consider
that it carries a risk, which you cannot necessarily assess or control, that
it will end up taking you a long way down. Take that first step by all means
but in full consideration of the expected (statistically speaking) cost of
doing so.

3\. Rename your "to read" list "sounded interesting". Come back to it if
something on it ever bubbles up from your subconscious as being relevant to
the task at hand. Maybe.

4\. Meditate, walk, write. These three activities above all others seem most
widely recommended as reaping huge rewards in this arena, with a daily dose of
around 30 minutes being a typical prescription for each. This is not from any
long term personal experience unfortunately, but there's a near certainty at
the back of my mind that a regime of these three each day would be
transformative for me. A couple of observations on these I can draw from
personal experience; the first two activities can be combined; and on the
writing, pen and paper is to be recommended, and committing to throw it out at
the end of the session is a marvelous cure for writers block.

~~~
zokier
> You won't miss it [news], you won't miss out (the big stuff will find its
> way to you regardless)

Maybe it is different in the valley or wherever, and of course highly
dependent on your social circles, but not being able to comment any current
affairs can make some conversations quite awkward. Personally I'd find that it
would not reflect well on the person.

Also I would say that it is far better to choose your own news sources rather
than rely on random regurgitations.

And this is coming from a person who does not follow news, and hasn't done so
for most of his adult life. Ignorance is a bliss, but it is still ignorance.

~~~
smikhanov
> [...] not being able to comment any current affairs can make some
> conversations quite awkward

Not really.

I don't watch TV since 1998. I also don't read newspapers (exceptions are
sometimes made for weekly magazines like Time, Economist, Spiegel or New
Yorker and monthly magazines of all sorts) and don't listen to radio (for
example, I always drive in silence -- it's not boring as many people tend to
think). I also don't read general-purpose news web sites, like BBC.

Despite all that I have never felt awkward talking to anybody about current
affairs. Someone expresses to you their dissatisfaction with some politician
or excitement about some celebrity you never heard of (I was in this situation
trillion times)? Ask them who is he or she and why they cause this
dissatisfaction, which party they belong to, or whether they have previous
history of screwing things up.

People will gladly explain this all to you if it really matters to them. Your
desire to listen will remove all awkwardness.

------
spydum
I've had this discussion with many folks, and I've come away with the
conclusion: we each have a natural limit to the volume of information we can
process in a day.

I personally find that if I read world events/news/major tech sites in the
morning, I find my mental capacity a bit strained at work for the rest of the
day. If I limit my input in the morning to focused planning of the day, and
VERY restricted reading (maybe one article/specific topic, or listen briefly
to news radio on the way to work ~25min), I am much more productive and less
stressed. It doesn't appear to matter the medium (read/listen/watch).

My theory is, there are only so many topics you can legitimately consume in a
day, sort of like a quota system. It should be your primary job to decide in
what priority you want to occupy your brain with.

Plenty of other posters mention sort of the same thing: decide what is of
VALUE to you, not just interesting. The world is full of interesting
information, but if all you do is consume it, what good was it to you? Reserve
some time and mental capacity to put that information to use.

------
lolwutf
My honest answer? I ended up dating someone who was constantly on my case
about being forgetful, forgetting names, details, being scatter brained, blah
blah blah.

Miraculously, that didn't drive them away and, now, just over a year of dating
later, I've noticed I've developed new mental habits to train myself to
remember details, in order to avoid the negative reinforcement of my S.O.
nagging about my forgetfulness.

And, in practice, these days, I'm quite a bit more effective at identifying
what details are relevant, reliably persisting them to memory if needed, and
identifying/purging/ignoring irrelevant details, which actually end up getting
in the way of storing the important ones (this, of itself, was a problem that,
when solved, yielded lots of forward progress for this issue).

Sorry, I'm not sure if this is something you can very effectively optimize for
(and maybe shouldn't!... 'seeking partner to help fight scatter brain'), but
it's a true story, and one angle, at least. :)

~~~
calinet6
This is actually a great answer. The same thing happened to me, and I think it
was almost natural based on how our opposing personalities balanced. This
balance has turned out to be greatly beneficial to the both of us—she helps
keep me focused and improve my skills in the scatterbrain area, and I help her
branch out and be more spontaneous and creative at times. Works great.

It doesn't have to be a romantic relationship that does this—I've worked with
people whose personalities balanced out mine, and together we had a similar
good thing going on. Creativity and ability for the mind to wander is a great
thing for inspiration and discovery, and then bringing in the focus is great
for making ideas real.

So, seek out other people who balance your personality. The fact that your
mind works the way it does is not necessarily bad, and there are people all
around you who can compliment you.

------
noufalibrahim
There was a time when people gorged. They wisened up and figured out that a
certain economy of intake was better for their health.

I think people do the same now with intellectual material. An economy of what
you take in is a good thing. It makes you healthier and less worried. There's
going to be a lot of stuff that you'll miss but that's okay. Most of it is
going to disappear soon given the churn rate of tech. If you do need to
indulge, do so in more foundational materials rather than the "library of the
week" or "language of the month".

Another thing is to take up a hobby. Something non intellectual. Something
physical is good, something artistic is fine too and explore that area on a
regular basis - preferably daily. Don't (and this is serious) track all
aspects of the hobby as many people do with devices. Stay offline and just
lose yourself in the hobby for a while. Don't feel compelled to share every
bit of your life social media networks notwithstanding. You should have
private compartments that are your own space.

Another useful bit of advice to have a "dry day" once a week. No going online.
It's great to get yourself aligned again.

As much as technology has given us, I think it has a dehumanising effect.
disconnecting on a regular basis is a good thing. You only gain from it.

------
patrickdavey
I cut out reading (24 hour) news this year. I no longer read bbc news, my
local papers etc. I figured (and it's true) important things tend to get
mentioned (either on HN, or just in conversation etc.)

There's also the idea of the "circle of influence" (i.e. worry / do something
with the things you can _actually_ influence, forget about the rest - slightly
comes back to the 24 hour news thing for me). Perhaps you might enjoy reading
"The 7 Habits of Highly effective people"

Good luck :) You're certainly not alone.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
> I cut out reading (24 hour) news this year

I did this too, and it feels great. I can't remember where I heard it from but
I'm stealing it:

    
    
      "I would rather be uninformed, than ill-informed"
    

A lot of what you see on TV and read in newspapers is either advertisements
from PR firms disguised as news items or propaganda. This is even more so if
it's election season.

tl;dr: Turn off your TV.

~~~
weinzierl
“If the news is that important, it will find me.” [0] is the quote that came
to my mind.

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/politics/27voters.html/](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/politics/27voters.html/)

------
jhki
I really recommend meditation.

Other than that, you just need to accept that you'll never be able go through
it all. And prioritize what's most important to your life. And sometimes just
lay it all aside and recharge.

But meditation has really healped me with all of these. And in the end it's
quite of a high-quality problem.

~~~
atrandom
First comment on NH ever for me - because I really think meditation can be the
answer to your problem. I read this book about a year ago - Search Inside
Yourself ([http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-
Achi...](http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-
Achieving/dp/0062116932)). I started practicing meditation - maybe a couple of
times a week only and more whenever i am stressed out. It has helped me deal
with all kinds of stress and i am more focused then ever before.

This book was written by one of early Google engineers who has learned
meditation and created a class that he has taught to thousands of Google
employees. Unlike much of other writing or classes on meditation this one is
written in plain language and cites lots of neuro research. It is not even
that long.

So go read first half of this book, practice it for 3 months and then
reevaluate.

~~~
wallflower
> First comment on NH ever for me

Welcome to HN! I lurked for years before I posted. Even though I am less
'active' now because of various projects, I still use HN as a filter for what
might be of interest.

------
rankam
"800 articles I have yet to read...Currently my instapaper account has some
800 articles I have yet to read. Kindle has about 10 books I want to
read...pinboard account has about 100 unread article"

The following is just my opinion and I don't mean to be antagonistic. However,
IMHO, your issue is that you think that being aware of topics is equivalent to
truly understanding those topics. If you were really interested in those 100
unread pinboard articles, you would have read them - you seem to like the idea
of knowing about the topics of the articles more than actually understanding
the underlying concepts contained in the articles.

Stop trying to "be smart". If you're interested in an article - read it. Right
now - try to understand it. If you read it and don't get it, find a writeup on
the same topic written by a different person and read that. Continue this
until you finally "get it". If you can't take 5-30 minutes out of your day to
read something, you're likely not that interested in the topic. Your entire
post screams that you don't know what you want to know nor how to manage your
time. If you're serious about learning, start learning - and that means not
adding another thing to any list until you have crossed off everything of your
existing list. Instead of adding things to lists, make an effort to try to
check things off of your list that already exists.

At the end of the day, life is all about choices - you can choose to continue
to add things to your "to-do" list OR you can choose to start completing the
existing tasks on your list.

~~~
leviathan
I don't understand how you can do a full on attack on the OP without knowing
him or his situation.

You seem to think that a person has nothing else during his day than read
every piece of news that comes their way. It might be a good idea to consider
the fact that some people are extremely busy (with work or other tasks) but
still want to stay informed. Those people would probably come across a piece
of news or article that looks interesting, bookmark it to read later (because,
you know, they have work now) and never get around to actually reading it
because of work load.

If you can stop whatever you're doing and follow up every article that seems
interesting to you, you might not be doing important work, or your time is
very flexible to allow such a thing. It probably isn't a good idea to
generalize that this can apply to everyone.

~~~
rankam
Valid and like I said, I didn't mean my comment to be antagonistic and
certainly wasn't overtly trying to attack the OP. Obviously it came off like
that so my apologies.

But, I think you're missing my point - the information overload, in this
particular case, seems to be a direct result of the decision to continually
add articles to their list all the while knowing that they are never going to
be able to find enough time to read them.

"You seem to think that a person has nothing else during his day than read
every piece of news that comes their way."

I understand that my post could have been interpreted in this way, but what I
actually meant was that if you are truly interested in something, start making
time for that interest. Sure, no one can drop everything they're doing
whenever they want to pursue each of their interests every time they arise.
However, you can make the decision to create time for your interests - and
this means prioritizing your interests.

~~~
brianmcc
FWIW I understood exactly what you meant, and I think you identified a real
factor - it's important to identify a root cause of such self-identified
"problem behaviour", not just identify coping mechanisms and carry merrily on
doing so. I think you are spot on, partially at least. (I'm neither the OP,
nor any idea who the OP is - but your comment resonates)

------
felipeerias
I tend to have similar problems, compounded with the fact that I have been
working on remote for the most part of the past five years or so. Here are, in
no particular order, some of the things that have helped me.

Computer and desk are for work; leisure time should happen somewhere else,
using something else. The more time you spend goofing off while in the exact
same place where you work, the more likely you are to do it during work hours.

Staring for long hours at a screen can seriously mess up your sleep. If you
want to read at night, do it on physical books, an e-book or a reading app
with good night-mode (I like Instapaper as well).

When I need to focus and think about a problem, I like to leave the computer
aside for a while, take pen and paper, and sketch possible solutions.
Depending on your job, it could work for you as well.

Get out of the house. This depends on the person, but I have never really been
able to focus when working at home: I always end up going to a cafe or
library, as having other people around (even if they are strangers) helps me
focus.

When I need to write a long letter or blog post, I often use my iPad with a
Bluetooth keyboard. I lay back on a chair/couch, keyboard on my lap and iPad
on a table in front of me, out of easy reach. The idea is to get in a
comfortable position where the only thing I can do is type.

Finally, one has to accept the fact that it is simply not possible to keep up
with the flow of new stuff. We need to prioritise, least we start forgetting
the really important things because our minds are too full with cruft, too
used to skimming through things without time for reflecting on them.

------
estrabd
You might be INTP. FInd out and if you are, find a community of them. It
helped me.

And to put it succinctly, minimize your information firehoses and reject the
notion that you need to keep abreast of everything even if it is not relevant
to you.

Purge all of your reading lists and resist building them. If you keep any
lists or bookmarks, require that they be things you HAVE read and want to keep
as reference for later. I do have a "toread" bookmark folder, but I almost
never go back to read things there.

Visit only one or two tech sites a day. For example, I come to HN to the
exclusion of almost anything else because it does a good job of showing only
relevant things. But I limit this to 3-5 times a week and only when I'm bored.
It's a good filter.

Lastly, get a personal project that serves as a good source of challenges. Use
it to help decide if you should read about a particular technical topic.
You'll find that this serves as a good filter, but at the same time you'll
magically seem to read about things relevant to your technical challenges in a
surprisingly timely manner.

HTH,

~~~
chubot
I don't think information addiction has anything to do with a particular
Meyers-Brigg personality type. They seem like an orthogonal axes. If anything,
I would imagine INTP are less likely to have this issue, because they are
interesting in meaning and not just information. I would think the more social
personality types would be more addicted to news or e-mail, but that's just
speculation.

One thing I do is take notes on most things I read. Just a couple sentences.
This helps in several ways:

1) If you're not willing to take notes on something, it's not worth reading.
So you read less.

2) It limits your rate of consumption, because writing takes time. So you read
slower.

3) Having it written down and organized reduces the burden on your brain. It's
like the GTD system. You want to relieve your brain of holding information.
Your brain will know it is one click away if you have organized your notes
properly.

4) When writing notes, you are relating it to things you already know. It
forces recall. This prevents your brain from being just a jumble of useless
disconnected facts.

~~~
zero_intp
Sadly, the desire to understand the 'real truth' requires significant time
spent taking in data. Anyone who can promise meaning from a single point of
view is lying.

Notes rock. I agree with 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I like tasks and reminders in any of a variety of systems. I send myself a lot
of emails to process later.

------
wkmeade2
GTD. GTD = David Allen's book GETTING THINGS DONE which has been mentioned
below already. I've lived the splatter-gun-to-focus process that GTD can
create, if you stick with GTD. I blog about GTD on and off. Here is my
before/after with pictures: [http://restartgtd.com/gtd-journey-
after/](http://restartgtd.com/gtd-journey-after/) and, here is my 5 year GTD
time lapse of refactored desks and trusted systems:
[http://restartgtd.com/gtd-time-lapse/](http://restartgtd.com/gtd-time-lapse/)

~~~
hoggle
Thanks for the links, very insightful.

As somebody who unfortunately is only a fairly recent GTD convert I was
wondering if you could elaborate more on why Omnifocus wasn't for you?

I was thinking of buying it for both my Mac and iPhone but I am still
undecided as I don't know if it really is the right solution for me. GTD to me
most of all is about honestly taking stock of our own shortcomings as human
wetware (and pragmatically be OK with it) so I'm essentially asking myself if
David Allen would rather be for _some_ organic, haptic "real world"
physicality at least..

~~~
girvo
Personally, following Allens instructions to the letter made GTD "stick", when
all the digital tools I tried had failed for me over and over again. Having a
physical reminder of everything made building a habit far easier and avoided
distractions that come with a computer and a screen.

~~~
hoggle
Thanks for sharing I was suspecting something like this..oh welp, those
alluring glowing computer screens they surely are distracting.

------
teekert
Same here. Recently my Moto G broke. It would take 3 weeks to get it fixed and
I decided not to have a phone in the mean time. I did this before, people will
complain about your poor availability but for me it is only friends, and
mostly via Whatsapp. At Work I'm behind my PC mostly and very reachable, I
have a desk phone as well so I can call people and I use Skype out...

This experience is always eye opening. It always makes me wonder what the hell
I was doing with that smart phone all the time. I just got it back (!after 7
weeks!) and I do 3 days on a battery because I hardly check it. I lost the
habbit. I feel much better, when I bike to work I don't have a podcast playing
(Twit, No Agenda, yes I miss it, I even burned two No Agendas to a CD for a
long car ride, had to dig around the attic for burnable cds :)), I'm not
whatsapping during work, not reading long posts on he toilet. I have time to
think. Think about what to do, what to learn, how the day will look like. This
alleviates a lot of stress, just having a clear and relaxed picture of what
your day will look like.

In short: Just stop it. Just Stop overloading your brain. You know exactly
what is wrong but you are too weak. Stare out the window, go on walks without
your cell phone, quit facebook. The world will not miss you.

I have a very strong feeling that when we stopped being bored, stopped
waiting, stopped doing nothing, stopped staring and replaced it with constant
consuming of information, we lost something valuable. And indeed, those apps
are shortcuts to dopamine release, it is hard to stop. I admit, getting my
phone back was like getting a new gadget, but I try to restrain myself from
using it. One small trick is to do most thing in the browser, it does not put
notifications in your notification area.

By the way, you posted your question here to find an easy way out, to get a
tip like: Scratch your left nut for 3 minutes once a day and feel better. But
there is no such advice. There is no shortcut. You are going to have to do
something radical if you really want change. If you really want change, delete
all those accounts, get a dumb phone.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought
will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk
again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the
kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. -Henry David Thoreau

It is hard work.

~~~
coned88
You say i wrote this to get the easy answer but I got yours which is a big
help and really put things in perspective. I think if I just stopped reading
reddit I'd be fine.

Thanks so much.

~~~
teekert
Ok, I shouldn't have put it that way.

What I mean is that I get the distinct feeling that you know what to do, you
say you like to be informed but you are getting an overload of info. It is so
extremely easy to conclude you should reduce the amount of information you
consume that you already know that. So why don't you do it? Because you don't
know how. I'm saying it will take a lot of work indeed, and a lot of
willpower. There is no other way than to indeed just stop reading reddit.

Imo, what you need (and me too) is more time to let your thoughts wander, to
let your brain connect dots on its own without distraction, to let your brain
relax. So you reduce the amount of info. Why is this hard? Because you seek
immediate satisfaction, that is what you get from all that information. But
all this info is not satisfactory in the long run, hence your cry out to HN.
The process of undoing these tendencies is not rewarding at all in the short
term, but it will be in the long run. That is why it is hard, especially for
someone like you (and me.) Hard problems require focused willpower, not
changing /etc/hosts, you'll find something else to distract you.

------
jimfleming
Write it all down.

What do you need to do? What do you want to do? What things don't really
matter to you?

Organize it on paper or whatever medium makes sense. I like OneNote and
Trello. I've found its one of the easiest ways to remove those thoughts from
the back of my mind is to put them someplace actionable and consistent. A
stream of consciousness todo list isn't very productive.

With regards to instapaper or readability, either:

a) Treat it as a bookmarking service, not a read-later service. Then reference
it when a topic comes of importance to what you wrote down above or you're
just bored.

b) Clear out all 800 articles and start over, possibly being more selective or
auto-clearing them monthly.

These are both things the brain does naturally, pruning through attention and
focus and long-term storage for future reference :)

EDIT: Formatting

~~~
david_shaw
_> consistent_

I think jimfleming covered what I was going to say really well, but I wanted
to really emphasize that for this to work, you need to be maniacally
consistent with using the system.

I use Asana, and just keep a tab open next to my inbox. Sure, having a todo
list helped from the start, but it took probably 2-3 months of _consistently_
putting everything (and their anticipated due dates) into Asana before I could
really trust the system. Now that it's ingrained into my workflow, though, I
_know_ that anything I need to keep track of is there.

Once you get to that stage, it's like a whole different life -- seriously.

------
journeeman
Relax, it's okay. :-) I went through the same thing. I realized that it is
neither possible nor important to know a lot of stuff. It is more important
and a much more satisfying experience to follow one's own interests and learn
what one needs to in the process, as this kind of knowledge stays with you and
does not clutter your mind. Knowing stuff is not at all as important as being
able to apply logic and ask the right questions in any context.

If possible, try to work on something of interest that will take time, focus
and patience to achieve, like a painting or writing poetry or coding something
way beyond your current skill level. That would help your mind to calm down
and focus. Hope this helps.

~~~
coned88
Thanks a lot this was great advice.

~~~
journeeman
Glad I could be of help. :-) Thanks for asking the question.

------
traviswingo
First of all, purge all the articles. They might be a little outdated and
redundant now anyways.

But, I can understand and relate exactly to what you're going through. The
only difference (imo) is that my over-active mind has actually led to some
pretty bad anxiety that I'm just recently being able to cope with and manage.
I was at a point about a year ago where there was so much stuff happening
around me and so many things I was constantly trying to process (work, school,
private projects, potential startup ideas, relationships, family, etc.) that I
would end up in the hospital from panic attacks, seemingly from information
overload.

What i did to cope was seek therapy - and I actually only did that for about
five sessions until something clicked. I've since been able to simply
prioritize things in my mind and ignore things I deemed irrelevant. This has
helped immensely. Also, I've taken up meditation to really train my brain into
not getting so distracted so I can focus on only one thing at a time when I
need to.

You're definitely not alone here. We've spent our entire lives consuming
information at a level that we're not actually designed for, it'll take some
time to train yourself to slow down and focus on one thing at a time.

~~~
coned88
Awesome glad you are doing a bit better

------
austenallred
For a long time I felt (and now feel) the same as you. I just wanted to share
an experience that, while completely anecdotal, is perhaps atypical, and has
been one of the defining experiences of my life.

I got the Internet as a birthday present on my 8th birthday, and pretty much
disappeared from normal society for the next few years. The Internet was (and
is) fascinating - I could learn anything, interact with people I'd never met
with, and, notably, do adult things without anyone doubting me because I was
young.

But as I got older, the Internet, and therefore my mind, just got busier.
Eventually it was not only random articles and a few chatrooms, but dozens of
apps and sites that are programmed to give us a dopamine hit. Being online to
me feels like walking around in a casino trying not to gamble.

I don't think I concentrated on one thing for more than 20 minutes for years,
and outside of school I didn't have to. So I just convinced myself that school
was archaic, skipped as much class as I could, and ended up a mental
butterfly. It was working for me.

Except for when I wanted to get stuff done. I probably started learning to
program 100 times, but I would get distracted with cat pictures or something,
and even though I loved computers more than anything else, I couldn't do much
to create with them. I was diagnosed with ADHD, but I didn't really care; I
don't think that experience is unique to either me or people who have been
diagnosed with ADHD.

Then, all of the sudden, I went on a Mormon mission in eastern Ukraine. Two
years with 30 minutes of Internet a week (at an Internet club 45 mins away
from my apartment). My entire life was structured in a way I never would have
structured it in order to get me to concentrate on the things I considered
most important for that period of time.

My mind slowed down - in an almost literal sense. I had only finished a couple
of books in my _entire life_ before the mission, and on the mission I could
easily read the Old Testament for hours on end, paying attention to
intricacies of text I never would have realized before.

Then I got home. I jumped on Facebook, and right back into my old habits. My
mind was gone for weeks. Not gone in the sense that I wasn't learning anything
-- I would pick up tidbits here and there, but I never got deep enough into
anything to make any of that learning useful. It terrified me.

So now I spend a lot of time on very strict information diets. I severely
limit my time on HN, Reddit, Facebook. I try to keep my reading on a Kindle so
the Internet isn't even an option. I would _love_ for someone to create an app
(that works) that limits what sites I can use so I can go into "wired in" mode
when I'm programming.

In short, don't be afraid to place restrictions on yourself. Let your mind
slow down.

~~~
anabranch
[http://selfcontrolapp.com/](http://selfcontrolapp.com/)

Works well. It cannot be turned off and you can set it for a specific amount
of time. You choose the websites you would like to block.

Your phone is obviously a weak point, but it's a start.

~~~
probably_wrong
> It cannot be turned off and you can set it for a specific amount of time

I almost stopped using the app due to the lack of an off button, after my boss
asked for some data and I could not get it on time because the website was not
on my whitelist.

Luckily, there is a way of turning it off. If you don't want to know it skip
the rest of this comment, and otherwise here it is, in case someone needs it:
the app uses the local time, so by changing your computer's time forward you
can end the block earlier.

~~~
kazagistar
No way to disable things is a dealbreaker for me.

It should be possible (if slightly annoying) to disable restrictions, but it
should only ever be temporarily disabled.

~~~
Houshalter
A chrome extension I use called stay focus has an option to require typing a
long document exactly in order to disable it. Unfortunately it's trivial for
even a mildly technical person to figure out how to get around it, so it's
become useless for self control.

~~~
kngspook
> it's trivial for even a mildly technical person to figure out how to get
> around it

Copy & paste?

~~~
ehsanu1
No, it counts keystrokes too, so that doesn't work. I haven't tried to get
past it myself, but really all I'd do to sidestep it is go to incognito, or
use one of my other browsers.

------
charlespwd
I can't remember from whom I read/heard this from, I think it's from Rob
Walling in "Start small, stay small", but what resonated with me was the
following:

1\. Put yourself on an information diet, and

2\. Filter out any reading that you cannot turn into an actionable item.

For instance, I have pocket open right now. There's an article named "Cache is
the new RAM". I just removed it. Why? Yes. It _is_ interesting. But the
information cannot be translated into something of value with respect to what
I do.

Believe me, you won't miss out on the things you forgot existed.

------
dyadic
It's not at all a silly question, I've experienced the same and, reading the
comments, it seems many others have too.

My own problem was being too attracted to novelty, every little bit of
information that arrived in front of me was the most important piece of
information in the world. But, before I could act on it, the next piece would
arrive. This manifested in me having a long lists of books and articles to
read, things I wanted to do, things I wanted to learn, and, eventually,
dissatisfaction because I couldn't keep up with it all.

I "solved" my own problem by just routing every distraction as it arrived into
a look-at-later list. Then when later arrived I'd scan through, decide what
was actually worth following up on and just delete the rest. If you do this
then you will realise how unimportant most of those distractions were.

Going onwards the key is not to have 10 books and 800 articles and 100 more
articles, I'd suggest purging them. Focus on one book, ignore the rest. After
you finish that first book then pick one of the rest. If some of the books
were just bought on a whim and you don't have the enthusiasm to read then just
delete them, it's not a problem, no one will judge you. Delete all of the
articles, if they're important enough then you'll see them again.

Afterwards, don't buy any more books until you've finished the ones you have.
Notice the difference between not wanting to read a book that you have and
wanting to read the one you're thinking about buying. Is it really important?
Do you need it now?

With the articles, continue to use Instapaper, it's a great way to avoid the
immediate distraction. But only keep a limited amount of things in there.
Notice how quickly you add new articles and how quickly you read them. If
you're adding faster than you can read then delete the surplus. And if you
notice the list becoming unwieldly then delete them all and start again, you
won't miss anything, nothing is that important.

The same idea applies to many things, remove the impatience of "now!" and it's
easy to view and prioritize them. You'll never be able to do everything, so
just do the things that you want most and purge the rest. They're not
important, it doesn't matter.

~~~
geekam
look-at-later is amazing. I use Instapaper for exactly that. Now I have made a
habit of shoving everything there and going through it at a specified time in
the day.

~~~
coned88
is look-at-later a product I am confused.

~~~
dyadic
Ha, no, no product, it's just what I call the list.

I use IAWriter for it, but you can literally use anything.

------
jib
For me: Pick some system for dealing with stuff. I dont think it much matters
which one you do as long as you have one and it isnt based on stuff actively
being in your brain. Mine is inbox 0/4Ds whatever you want to call it, with me
allowing myself to put tasks for me in there.

Most of those systems focus on aggressive prioritization and removing lists of
tasks from your mind and moving them to paper.

Be aggressive about not storing stuff anywhere else. I used to have 10+ items
that I semi-actively thought about - now I've reached a point where I have
nothing at all loaded as "I must think about this/remember this/do this" \-
that stuff is all written down.

After that its just practice and repetition. Any time "I should do X" pops up,
write it down in your system, or say "thats ok, I have it written down in the
system" if you already have.

Doing this isnt all good - there are times that I miss having a long list
spinning in the back of my head. It means you need to load the list actively
if you're actually going to have discussions about what you are planning to
do. Its weird in the start to go "Uh I have no idea, let me check" if you're
asked what you're doing today/this week or asked if you have some great ideas
about random topic X. But its overall a lot more effective to be focused on
whatever you are actually doing rather than what you could be doing.

~~~
calinet6
This is the right way. A system allows you to unload your brain and get all
the crap out of the way, so you can stop thinking about it and focus on the
task at hand.

As overplayed as it is, GTD really is pretty good. It basically boils down to:
keep lists, use them religiously, and focus on one thing at a time. But the
book itself is good and goes into significantly more detail, all of which is
useful.

Any system will do, as long as it's trustworthy, and you actually commit to
using it.

As W. Edwards Deming said, "A bad system will beat a good person, every time."
Couldn't be more true. You can try try try to be as good as you will yourself
to be on your own, but regardless, even a poorly implemented system can do
better than you can on your own. This applies to many aspects of work, and
your own system is just the beginning.

------
lucaspiller
I used to be similar and here is what I do now:

\- Avoid the news. 99% is rubbish and the other 1% isn't going to have any
effect on you. If anything is important enough you'll hear about it anyway
(from talking to people, Facebook, etc). I only read HN and a few Reddits
regularly now, but even most of that is rubbish. If you hear about a news
topic that is interesting to you, sure go read into it, but you aren't going
to gain anything from constantly checking the news 'just in case' you miss
something.

\- Don't care about TV / movies / books / articles. Nothing you read / watch
is going to dramatically change your life, so don't feel you are missing out.
Again the good stuff will bubble up to you somehow. (Don't care doesn't mean
don't consume, I still take a break to watch shows and movies every so often,
but I don't do it religiously). After Google Reader shutdown I didn't bother
finding a replacement and I don't feel any less of it now.

\- Meditation. There are lots of different branches of meditation, rather than
focusing on a single problem the one I do has you focus on thinking about
nothing. You just need to observe any thoughts instead of following them, and
eventually your mind will be silent. It's leads to greater mindfulness which
means being present in the moment rather than thinking about the past or
future.

~~~
jodrellblank
_Don 't care about TV / movies / books / articles. Nothing you read / watch is
going to dramatically change your life_

Then what will? How will you escape any local maxima without input from far
away - far away in location, far away in time, far away in concept and ideas,
far away in political, social, economic, artistic, &c. worldview from where
you are?

Why would you skip the lessons other people took decades to learn, to refuse
to learn from history and from others outside your immediate contacts, on
principle?

~~~
gravedave
>Then what will?

So you assume that TV (80% crap), movies (pure entertainment, excluding
documentaries, which are also mostly crap anyway), books (60% crap) and
articles (90% assholes with opinions) are the only possible sources of
information? Do you really think there's nothing conspicuously missing from
there? Here's a hint: it's the origin of all the above and can provide more
than all of them combined.

~~~
jodrellblank
Look how often the writings of Marcus Aurelius pop up on HN.

Are you suggesting it's easier to go talk to him than it is to read his
writings? Or that the people you talk to can and will tell you everything his
writings could teach you?

No I'm not tautologically suggesting that awful TV shows are amazing. Nor am I
saying that you can't learn from living people you talk to, which is why I
qualified with 'local maxima' and 'far away'. Your friends, your HN topic
choices, your business contacts, are to some extent an echo chamber of people
doing things you do, liking things you like, sharing the world views you
share.

Reading the life experience of people who did things we can't do, experienced
things we will never experience, lived in political and social situations that
don't exist anymore, saw and dreamed of things in ways we just aren't thinking
about ... is pretty unique.

------
MichaelGG
My mind is the same way inside. It's never quiet, and it's terribly annoying.

To start, minimize intake. When I tried to stay on top of things, I found it
weighed me down, limited productivity, and didn't _really_ help. Skimming
topics is almost as useful as actually reading them. The benefit there is that
you acquire a lot of assorted bits of background info, which might come in
handy. But you don't need to deep dive and worry about getting through all the
material. Just knowing it's there is enough. And even then, consider limiting
the scope.

The whole "being informed, having an opinion, arguing" \-- it's really not
productive. I look back over all my HN interactions, and the vast majority of
it isn't really productive. Your opinions don't matter, and nor do the
arguments. If I spent the time I've wasted saying shit on HN doing something
useful (even reading fiction books), it'd have been better spent. (Now
_reading_ threads I've learned a lot, and getting some of my statements
corrected has been useful.) But there must be some low-level psychological
drive, since here I am. Mostly it comes from periods of boredom or depression,
where I can't get over the initial impulse to work. Eliezer covers it here[1].

When I've taken HN breaks for extended periods of time, and I don't fill in
that gap with another "news" source, I start to feel more peaceful, focused,
content.

1:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrast...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrastinating_we_fear/)

~~~
coned88
> Skimming topics is almost as useful as actually reading them. The benefit
> there is that you acquire a lot of assorted bits of background info, which
> might come in handy. But you don't need to deep dive and worry about getting
> through all the material. Just knowing it's there is enough. And even then,
> consider limiting the scope.

Good point.

> The whole "being informed, having an opinion, arguing" \-- it's really not
> productive. I look back over all my HN interactions, and the vast majority
> of it isn't really productive. Your opinions don't matter, and nor do the
> arguments. If I spent the time I've wasted saying shit on HN doing something
> useful (even reading fiction books), it'd have been better spent. (Now
> reading threads I've learned a lot, and getting some of my statements
> corrected has been useful.) But there must be some low-level psychological
> drive, since here I am. Mostly it comes from periods of boredom or
> depression, where I can't get over the initial impulse to work. Eliezer
> covers it here[1].

Another good one. It doesn't matter.

------
wallflower
The sad reality is that even if you read a book a week or a book every few
days, you would never be able to read the top X books. Life is about choices;
you will have to choose.

You already know who you are. Focus on relationships and finding out about who
people are.

An old adage: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you
care.

Meditation will help you. If you don't already do it - volunteer your time and
skills. Especially to teach those who might not be as confident as you.

Good luck!

~~~
coned88
Great advice thanks.

------
galfarragem
For some time I used to feel the same as you (and most of people here as I
understand). It was not easy but I started an information diet. I never went
back.

My information diet (in case of being helpful for somebody):

 _general news websites and newspapers_ \- None. If it is important you'll
know about it by somebody or it will be on HN top 10.

 _hacker news_ \- Top 10 articles of the last day [1].

 _specific news (in my case, javascript)_ \- Weekly digest email [2].

 _twitter_ \- Once a day, no tweeting and following only 10 accounts. Probably
still too much.

 _facebook and email_ \- Once a day. Probably still too much.

 _skype_ \- Just by appointment.

 _smartphone_ \- I don't have one. A basic phone is enough (unless I'm
traveling; maps and gps are really useful).

 _tv_ \- Just by appointment (ex: watch a sport event, specific TV show, etc).

To organize myself I use Secretweapon (GTD for evernote) [3] and Folder-system
[4].

[1] [http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-
daily/)

[2] [http://javascriptweekly.com/](http://javascriptweekly.com/)

[3] [http://www.thesecretweapon.org/](http://www.thesecretweapon.org/)

[4] [https://github.com/we-build-dreams/folder-system](https://github.com/we-
build-dreams/folder-system)

------
mmcconnell1618
It sounds like you've already realized you're drinking from a fire hose. There
is no possible way to consume all information. It is being generated far
faster than you could even hope to consume in many lifetimes.

Since you can't be informed about everything all the time pick a topic or two
that you are deeply interested in learning more about (or keeping up to date).
Then enjoy the fact that you can tune out the fear stations (CNN, Fox News,
etc.) and concentrate on your specialty. Because most other people won't know
nearly as much as you about your selected topics you may be perceived as far
more informed than others.

I get a weekly business magazine and used to be vigilant about reading every
article every week. Now I just skim the headlines and dig into something if
it's interesting. I'll even throw out a previous week's magazine if a new one
arrives. Anything important enough from the old issue will be in the new one.

The other advice that I can give is to pick the most important item/article
and put 100% of your energy to accomplishing your goal by a specific deadline.
Then move onto the next goal. My brain is much happier processing in serial
instead of parallel.

~~~
coned88
Good advice thanks

------
Houshalter
I worry that the people who really have the answer to this probably aren't
going to see this or post a comment.

~~~
chdir
In its own hilarious way, this could be closer to truth than most of the stuff
here.

------
karmacondon
I recently realized that I was taking in a large amount of information every
day but retaining very little of it. Between HN and Reddit, I would "learn"
dozens of things each day and end up not getting a lot of value out of it.
While this is tangential to the problem that you're having, I can definitely
empathize.

Two things that I'm trying out now:

1) Write down things that you learn each day and review them weekly. I find
this helps me to filter out a lot of the extraneous information and focus in
on things that could be useful in the future.

2) Monthly or bi-monthly focus on one specific skill or area of knowledge. Out
of all the things I could read/watch/listen to, I try to concentrate on things
that relate to one thing that can make me better. Bookmark or save interesting
things that you come across, but limit your attention to just books or
articles about one topic for the rest of December and January. The other stuff
will still be there when you come back to it.

The tl;dr is to write out your goals and come up with a plan to achieve them.
Focus on one and set aside time each day to make incremental progress.
Everything else will take care of itself.

------
mbrock
Yes, just purge them. Why not?

I sometimes use my brother's computer and simply close all of his open tabs,
and he always thanks me.

You say you're not anxious... But I'd think more about that angle. What you
describe sounds like a form of anxiety. You can be anxious and still be able
to sleep.

Information doesn't have to be painful or exhausting. Why do you feel like
this information is a burden? Why do you hesitate to declare a jubilee and
just clear your Instapaper?

How do you relax? What are your habits like?

Maybe you're focusing your problem-solving energy on fixing this info overload
problem, when what's actually bothering you is something missing in the other
parts of your life?

I know what you're talking about, but I also quite clearly see how I've
previously rushed to blame info overload. Actually, my ability to let info
just be what it is—without it causing anxiety or unhappiness—seems to depend
crucially on other factors.

~~~
coned88
> Yes, just purge them. Why not? > Why do you feel like this information is a
> burden? Why do you hesitate to declare a jubilee and just clear your
> Instapaper?

Fear of missing something important I guess. The info could prove important in
my life. It's a burdern because of the how I feel now. Worn down.

> You say you're not anxious... But I'd think more about that angle. What you
> describe sounds like a form of anxiety. You can be anxious and still be able
> to sleep.

I have an anxiety disorder and this could be anxiety. It's not the same
feeling though as when I think I am going to have a heart attack.

> How do you relax? What are your habits like?

I go to work, work on computer. Come home and relax on computer. On weekends I
occasionally go for a hike.

> when what's actually bothering you is something missing in the other parts
> of your life?

Certainly possible.

I'd love to hear more

------
frevd
Building lists for reading later is the same as having all the world's
information at hand, which the internet makes very easy. And it is literally
unfiltered, too. It's of no real value to collect for later, and sadly,
consuming information without need (practical use) might be entertaining, but
won't be remembered by your brain, aka waste of time.

A tendency to consume for distraction might indicate a burnout as well. In a
certain age or after too much monotonic work this is a common auto-reaction,
to keep us sane supposedly. Do something different.

While meditating can be calming, I suggest physical activity, helped me at
least, it is amazing what a little running (every day) can do. And in general
- ignore all the trash information, there is too much available these days -
stick to what you need to achieve goals (provided you have set those already).

------
neltnerb
Bare minimum, don't visit news websites of any kind. They're designed to
attract clicks and be sensational and make you think it matters. Really,
almost no news story has any impact on your life. You would be exactly as
happy and able to live your life without knowing anything about the story.

Anything truly important you'll hear about from other people. If you want, get
a subscription to the atlantic or something where they have long form articles
that are well researched and most importantly... delayed from the events. The
delay puts things into a perspective that makes it much easier not to get
drawn into feeling a need to "keep up". The story, if it's worth knowing
about, will still be a story in a month.

------
ivanhoe
I have the same problem, at some point you stop having time to read all that,
you just collect the information for the sake of collecting it. It's actually
a kind of hoarding disorder, and in my experience the similar measures can be
applied:

\- Learn to prioritize important vs useless info

\- Impose yourself a limit on time/amount of data daily

\- To support the above set some offline time to do something else, something
useful and relaxing

\- Organize your data and just delete all that you know you will never have
time to read

\- Learn to accept that you will never know everything, it's impossible, so
it's not a big deal if you miss some info. No, really, no big deal at all.
Relax :)

~~~
coned88
Great thanks so much

------
GHFigs
Change up your metaphor. Sometimes it's best to think of your "stuff" as a
stack to go through sequentially, sometimes a library to collect and browse,
sometimes transactions to be budgeted on some kind of ledger of your time and
attention, etc.

When you find a metaphor that works for you, the "rules" become rather
intuitive. Lately I think of my information consumption habit as something of
a diet: Eat when you are hungry. Stop eating when you are full. Stock only
enough food for your anticipated needs. Favor nutritious foods. When possible,
share meals with friends and family.

------
AndyJPartridge
I could have written that.

I'm in a (some would say privileged but it isn't) situation where money just
falls into my bank with little effort by myself. (Shareholdings.)

I am at a total loss as to which of the many "hobbies" I have surrounding me
that I should educate myself with each day. I'm learning about 100's of things
from Lego lighting projects to basic electronics right now; I don't know where
to dabble next.

The way out, I feel, is to sell many things, leave my phone at home, don't
connect to WiFi after 8pm at home - and try and just Be.

------
nrivadeneira
This works really well for me:

1) Meditation in the form of working out: The key here is the meditation.
Having regular times that you clear your mind and focus on nothing but what
you're doing helps focus in other areas of life. My personal preference is
intense exercise with headphones in. The music gives a harmonic rhythm that
helps drown out any other thoughts and prevents my mind from wandering.
Lifting heavy weights gives me something to focus intensely on and not think
about the outside world. It's also extremely important to not bring your phone
to the gym or watch the TVs at the gym.

2) Systematically externalizing your thoughts: I find that my thoughts feel
more cluttered and disjointed the more I try to keep in my head at once. It's
important to find a good and reliable system for organizing and managing
everything that might occur in your head on your computer. For example, I use
OmniFocus to manage anything that I might want to do ever - small tasks to big
long-term goals. I use Pocket to save any reading that I want to do later. I
use YNAB to budget and manage my money. I use Evernote for any random notes
that I have for myself. I use Google Calendar to schedule any event that might
need my attention. By utilizing tools to augment your brain capacity, you can
effectively offload a lot of the processing you would normally do. It's
important that you use these systems regularly otherwise they'll atrophy and
you'll go back to keeping everything in your head.

------
mihok
I can completely relate, Often I find that I wish I had a minoritory report
style HUD in my eyes/brain to allow me to sort, append and edit things I think
about. My mind is racing. There is so much information available, so many
people sharing things that I want to read, intend to, but never get to. It's
hard, and I sympathize with the OP. The best advice I can give is that of all
the things I've learned its dont be hard on yourself, take baby steps, and
build positive habits... There IS too much information out there, impossible
to consume in any normal manner. Dont be afraid to let go of some information
(at least for me, it feels like I'm already letting go because of the
overload/) A lot of the time, some of these things are more temporary than
others. Try to start to focus on the things that are highest priority, most
interesting to you, and have the most relevance to you as you are now. If this
is troubling, the question becomes more of a priority focus than an overload
of information. Otherwise, it just becomes a diligence and habit problem.
Along with this is also a problem with letting go with information. The fact
is, that its impossible to learn all the things right now. So focus on what is
relevant to you, take baby steps, read every chance you get but dont burn
yourself out. You can override this information overload.

------
fsloth
Fellow scatter brain here. I don't know if more anecdotal stories will help in
any sense but at least we're not alone it seems :)

I also have tons of articles and books I have not read. But - they are all
limited to few specific areas. I have this scatter brain mode and focus mode.
As I focus on specific things I realize that the trove of stuff I've gathered
from the scattery moments are actually really valuable since they usually
cover material part of my current brief obsession.

I really did not see this going anywhere five years ago but now I realize I've
actually built up a quite a good reference library and accidentally have an
improved mental picture where all the bits and pieces fit.

So - my anecdotal advice - I've found it really reassuring to have a few
specific goals in form of plausible future stories of self improvement and as
I scour the interenets in search of trivia in my scattery moment I've
succeeded in building this firewall to suppress my collector instincts. I ask
myself - does this plausibly fit anywhere in my current "self improvement
stories" \- and if they do, I just go wild. But I file them with librarian
pedantry and when the whim of focus comes I know where to look.

I've managed to collect plausible study paths in several unrelated fields and
actually managed to follow a few of them - at a really slow pace, though.

------
sordina
Dedicate set blocks of time to read novels. Only on Sundays for example. It
doesn't matter what the book is, as long as it's fiction. It can be trashy but
fun stuff like The Davinci Code... In fact, the lighter the better to start
with. The important thing is that you read them from start to finish. This
resets scatter brain. No joke. Physical books are the best way as well, since
a Kindle lets you get distracted too easily. Just grab a book and go to the
park.

------
threatofrain
Delete until you have a quantity you can handle. Most articles collected over
the web are too piecemeal or disconnected. A bookmarking tool ends up
collecting a messy assemblage of to-do's.

Also, a lot of places signal golden information, but they're mostly junk.
Nobody will ever admit that they deliver too much junk; everyone wants to say
that they are worth your attention.

Pay attention to the gold-per-junk ratio as you read a textbook. As you move
to a specific technical sub-Reddit. As you scan Hacker News headlines. As you
look up questions on Stack Overflow. For my specific case, that mental
exercise has informed me to ditch Reddit, and to only look at Hacker News when
filtered to the top 10/20 (because Hacker News is only sometimes good, but
majority distraction), and to save no more than a handful of authoritative or
systematically comprehensive guides to information per subject matter. I don't
read any news _at all_ outside of this.

I also pay attention to what I know. I think about what information has
carried over time as a tool in my kit, and how little that is. A lot of
information over the web won't make it into your kit. This has guided my
decision on what to delete from my life.

------
codewithcheese
Meditation can be a powerful tool for dealing with information overload and
reduce stress. Even just spending a few minutes to consciously be still and
clear your mind can help.

Kevin Dewalt explains it better than I can.
[http://kevindewalt.com/2013/07/28/8-ways-meditation-makes-
yo...](http://kevindewalt.com/2013/07/28/8-ways-meditation-makes-you-a-better-
entrepreneur/)

------
g0v
You are your own worst enemy.

[edit] After reading my post again it seems pretty scatter-brained, I guess
that's appropriate in some way.

Back in 2011 I decided that I would teach myself all this great computer
science stuff and work in information security. Apart from the fact that
security in itself is an advanced topic, I had given myself a very long-term
goal without realizing it.

It wasn't until a few months of research that I realized how truly enormous
computer science as a topic really was. The moment I realized this I remember
sitting back in my chair and thinking "fuck". So, I started with fundamentals
and went from there. Thus far I've learned enough to hold my own and have the
confidence that I can make it in information security once I get there.

I can't tell you how many articles, blog posts, and comment threads I read
about being productive. Books I've put on my list to read and am currently
reading (about 4 right now) is virtually always growing. It wasn't until the
last month or so that I realized a pattern in my behavior; I will focus
intensely on one thing for a variable period of time and then lose interest in
it.

A few tactics against myself that have proven useful:

\- Blocks all websites that waste my time between the hours of 0800-2200.

\- Uninstall all games and their respective clients (done this many times).

\- Keep work/studies on screen/desk 24/7; the idea here is to have to stare at
what you're supposed to be doing right now, as you do not do it.

I still procrastinate terribly and go around my own countermeasures on a
regular basis, but I've improved nonetheless. Hang tough buddy, you're only
fighting yourself so identify your weaknesses and exploit them.

------
bbaisley
I've gone through that. What you need to do is some time management
techniques. One of the most important is prioritization. It's great that you
want to read all those articles, but set a time frame after which they are no
longer relevant. At the start of every day make sure you have a list of tasks
that you MUST get done. Do those first, nothing else. Aside from getting
things done, it will give you a sense of accomplishment. For longer term
tasks/projects I right the top 3-5 on post-it notes and put them in an area I
see them every day. A constant reminder that those are my priorities. Most of
this is based on the Daily Planner technique by Brendan Brushard
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYwz3JUsLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYwz3JUsLw)
Be aggressive about purging. If it's really important, it will come up again.
Also, remember that email is someone else's to do list for you, not your to do
list.

------
orasis
Meditate every day. Start with 2 minutes and work your way up to 20 minutes.

The book, "Mindfulness in Plain English" is a great place to start.

Good luck!

~~~
coned88
Thanks looks great

------
ChuckMcM
You are not alone, AFAICT everyone has hit this at one time or another. People
like to think, and communications have made it easier than ever to think about
a lot of different things. I expect it is the mental equivalent of 'free
candy' which is to say that for many people if there is a source of free food
nearby that is stocked with lots of things they like, they eat way too much
and get fat. When we think too much we get distracted. Thinking about it that
way helps lead to a solution, _goals_ , and recognizing your distraction for
what it is, _treats_. [1]

My technique is to set a timer and work on something while that timer is set,
and when it goes off I can reward myself with a peek at the distractions. I
fool myself into not being tempted by the distractions because the timer will
tell me when I can enjoy them, that leaves me as focused as I can be on the
problem at hand.

[1] He says while typing on HN while he should be fixing code.

------
parley
Some advices in this post are related to restrictive tooling and some are
related to adjusting ones attitude. Whereas I used to rely on the former,
nowadays I find the latter brings a completely different (and better) kind of
calm.

This article [0] is one of the best ways I've ever seen it put, and I think
both the culling and surrender parts it mentions are very important - not just
one of them.

Inner calm is so important. Like countless others in this post have said: Try
meditation, and give it time. It can be an important piece of the puzzle of
silencing those voices.

Good luck.

[0] The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-
sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything)

------
wonjun
I have been trying to find an efficient way to deal with this, and the trick
is to decide what the most important thing is at any given moment for you.
When you are fairly sure what that is, let's say it's an article or a book,
you have to finish what you set out to do initially before another interesting
thing gets your attention. The cost of context switching is very high, and you
have to really pick out what matters to you. If you can take the time to think
about it, there will be things that you want to dive into more depth than
others. Once you are able to reach a certain level of expertise on a topic, I
find it becomes easier to concentrate on few things (signal) and ignore the
rest (noise).

------
thibaut_barrere
A lot of people get trapped into this these days.

You have no commitment to read these articles. They should serve you, not the
other way round.

I would personally purge everything and stop using pinboard/instapaper for a
while.

Try to unsubcribe to as many newsletters as you can as well, it definitely
helps.

~~~
coned88
Sometimes it does feel like I serve them. That's scary. I am hesitant to let
them go because there very well can be things that may matter in there. I've
had conversations with people who I wouldn't have been able to had I not read
that one article about something. But at this point it's getting crazy so I
think you're right.

------
weinzierl

        Bastian had shown the lion the inscription on the 
        reverse side of the Gem. "What do you suppose it 
        means?" he asked. "'DO WHAT YOU WISH.' That must mean I 
        can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so?"
    
        All at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave,  
        and his eyes glowed.
    
        "No," he said in his deep, rumbling voice. "It means 
        that you must do what you really and truly want. And 
        nothing is more difficult."
    
        "What I really and truly want? What do you mean by 
        that?"
    
        "It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't 
        know it."

------
40pdev
What has helped me in that past is this here: "do nothing alternative"[1].
That is, I select a task that I think is most important to me and set aside a
certain time to do it (lets say 2 hours). During that time I either work on
that task or I do nothing. So if I don't want to work, fine. All I can do then
is stare at the wall.

This has to effects: 1. I calm down. Its kind of an enforced meditation
period. 2. I usually get bored and go back to the task.

[1]: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-
project/20...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-
project/201202/problem-procrastination-try-do-nothing)

------
gasull
About news, read this article from Aaron Swartz:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)
"I think following the news is a waste of time."

Now I get all my news from weekly newsletters in an email inbox I only open on
Saturdays. The rest of the week I don't read any news.

I use Nutshellmail.com for getting my twitter feed emailed to me on Saturdays.

Also:

Fighting Information Overload With The Impending Doom Engine

[https://medium.com/life-hacks/fighting-information-
overload-...](https://medium.com/life-hacks/fighting-information-overload-
with-the-impending-doom-engine-9cbd3899b87)

------
corford
Quick practical advice that works for me (a guy with 300+ books on my Amazon
wishlist that I'm blatantly never going to buy and read):

Stay off reddit & google news, check HN in the afternoon/evening and not first
thing in the morning, save Product Hunt for the weekends and mentally check
yourself whenever you land on a wikipedia article so you see the rabbit hole
before you jump (you can still jump down it on occasion, just be aware you're
doing it). Another commenter mentioned renaming your "to read" list to
"sounded interesting" \- that's awesome too and something I'm going to go do
right now.

------
j_lev
Always late to the party, I had the following two thoughts on the walk to work
this morning:

1) "shows to watch" \- just delete these and reclaim the time. TV shows and
movies are in a new golden age, and if they don't continue to get better then
you'll still have the "old" ones from now.

2) When I feel like I'm consuming too much media I remind myself of Stephen
Covey's bit on Production vs Production Capacity, and that spending too much
time on Production Capacity is just as bad as spending too much time on
Production. There reaches a point where you have to start applying your
knowledge and just getting the work done.

------
danielflopes
I use a page on a tool like OneNote or Evernote to write every day the notes
that pop up on my head, or interesting information I read. Then, during 1hour
of the weekend, I grab that page and a) trash the info that actually doesn't
matter b) save the info that I think it's useful, in a certain section
(Startup ideas; Biz Dev strategies; etc)

I also use Pocket to save articles to read later, but overtime I became more
agressive in filtering what to read. If I don't feel to read it, I just trash
it. Now it's kind of a habit. (I still do have articles saved in Pocket from
several weeks before. But they are MUCH less.)

------
jqm
Decide what the ultimate purpose is, then prune accordingly. You don't need
to, and you can't, know or do everything. So in order to succeed, you need
focus. How can you get it?

Accept. Don't try to control. Observe without judgement. (But always observe).
That is to say, stay aware of your thoughts and feelings as you compute. Stay
aware of your body, your breath. Check in on yourself as much as you can. How
are you feeling? What excites you? What do you really want to do?

By taking this attitude you see begin to see the instincts that lead to
action. When you begin to understand connections, you will gain a degree of
control.

------
JoeAltmaier
Strangely, and Organizer can help. Software or hardware (calendar notebook),
just writing stuff down in a timely helps relax. I know what I have to do
today; tomorrow will take care of itself. And I have that written down, so I
don't have to keep juggling it in my head.

800 articles is just a couple a day for a year. I know, more keep getting
added. But some get stale too; some get skimmed and turn out to be not what
you wanted. Its not about the number; its about the rate.

I need time to clear my head of ALL the stuff. During commute, or before bed,
or brunch on Sunday - as long as I have respite, I can deal.

------
w_t_payne
I wouldn't hold myself up as an example to follow, but I tend to go in cycles
... spending some time obsessively skim-reading lots of technical writing (to
the detriment of my wife and children) ... then bashing away at work and
trying to calm my stress enough to be productive (also to the detriment of my
wife and children) ... then spending some time in an exhausted stupor, then
waking up and beginning the cycle again. It's not a very organised life, but I
do manage to get some things done (although not as much as I
should/could/might).

~~~
RobertKerans
This is what I do, spurts of alternating heavy technical reading and heavy
work, but it absolutely wipes me out (at the minute, I'd say 7-10 days a month
I feel zombie-like), and i know it really pisses off my SO. It works; i absorb
large amounts of information very rapidly, and i can apply that information
usefully, but I feel similar to how the original questioner described their
situation - the sheer amount of information often feels like a flood that's
impossible to filter, especially when I'm weary.

------
JSeymourATL
You've clearly struck a vein among HNers, noting the 200+ comments.

I've found going off-grid for several days a huge help to clear thoughts, and
reboot the mind. Bill Gates famously took twice a year solo-trips to a lake
cabin, just to read and write in peaceful silence. People used to call that
vacation.

But I find these individuals who boast they blissfully ignore news and current
events all together depressing. As though we're regressing to our reptilian
past.

Relative to your conundrum, I'm reminded of the quote by Oscar Wilde
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

------
coliveira
Here is my view: there is a lot of information that is unnecessary if you know
the basics. Take for example mathematics: if you learn well the basics of
analysis, number theory, geometry, and combinatorics, everything else is noise
that you can pick up if needed. Learn philosophy and you will see that most
new ideas are not really new anyway. Read the classics. These are the basics
that give you perspective so that you don't need to read every scrap of "new"
information out there, and concentrate only on what you need.

------
gravedave
I used to have this problem myself, and the main cause, I think, was a lack of
direction. Now I have one, and I discard any piece of info that doesn't
concern me, instead of trying to read everything because "it may come in
handy".

Assange's typical breakfast while in exile? Yeah, whatever. New distributed
computing paradigm? Can wait till proven useful. Uber vs. Lyft? Don't care,
using neither. Foreign news? Whatever. Someone got harassed by
authorities/uber driver/whoever? Nothing I can do about it. Rant about poor
customer support? Them's the breaks. "What I learned" articles? Good for them,
don't care. Article about some random niche (e.g. most prolific zipper brand)?
Will read first paragraph, tops. Inspirational blog post about "the one thing
holding you back"? Bleh, probably wrong in my case, we each have our own
obstacles.

I still have hobbies and interests, and feed them, but to anything that's not
related I don't even give a second look. I ignore everything related to tech I
neither currently use nor particularly like, as well as any "lifehack" article
(ooh, 0.5s off my showering time!), or an overly opinionated piece (any of
these words in the title: incredible, insane, unbelievable, horrible etc. See
cracked.com).

Also, nothing by any writers condescending enough to talk about their reader
as if they know him/her in their articles ("the reason you...", "you must..",
"you know...", "of course, you may..." \- no, that may not be the reason I,
that may not be what I must, I may or may not know, and of course, maybe I may
not).

So the main takeaway, I guess, is to question whether each and every one of
those instapaper/pinboard articles really matter to you. I used to be a big
hoarder myself, and wondering when I'll get through it all, but I realized I'm
doing just fine not doing so. Sure, let them gather up! Have a 100-item,
1000-item, 1000000-item backlog, what of it? You'll have something to do when
bored, but until then, leave them be, and don't dare look at how many are
there (it doesn't matter, you'll never clear it anyway).

I still hoard BTW, but just because doing so gives me the sense that "I won't
be missing anything, I'll get back to it". I won't, of course, but my lizard
brain doesn't know that, so shhh!

As for books, just forget about them. Leave that list aside and only look at
it when you feel like reading a book and wondering what to pick up next, and
never look at how many are left. May be hard at first, but you may eventually
learn to just "let go".

Misc techniques I found useful:

Speed reading - read only the first few words of each paragraph, good articles
are well-divided in paragraphs, and you can skip the crap. Generally, I skip
case studies, unless the subject particularly interests me - the conclusion
may be proven flawed in a few years anyway, once a disruptive element will
enter the equation - "How could real estate possibly be a bad investment? Look
at these case studies showing how reliable an investment it is!".

Shortlist - make a list of interests (not more than 10, including job-related
stuff, and be specific. Say "Northbridge", not "IT and stuff..."), discard
everything not related.

Next! - if an article keeps repeating the same thing for several paragraphs
("since they're successful", "because they're successful", "have
successfully..."), it's a red flag that it probably doesn't have much content,
is just filling up a word quota, and may have even given away the conclusion
in the title (as a hook for the reader). Skip to the last paragraph, then move
on.

tl;dr

Discard the irrelevant, filter your knowledge input, get used to there always
being more out there to read, and to being unable to absorb it all. Disregard
how much there's left to read ("oh no, 1000 more news items to go!"), and skip
over the boring and the trite. Anything that doesn't help you, your
family/friends or your career, and anything you cannot do anything about
(natural disasters, conflicts in foreign countries - odds are you won't
remember these yourself in a couple of years, remember how many other things
you'll get to read about until then), you can do without.

------
hagope
Here are a few things I'm trying and it seems to be working well: \- Delete
Facebook account \- Block time wasters using browser extension (reddit, news
sites etc) \- Block these sites also on my wifi router \- Keep a daily log of
all the habits I want to build/break (actually I've hacked a rails app to do
this, it only runs on my machine tho :)

I've whitelisted only a few time wasting sites (HN and Twitter) but generally
I don't read news articles anymore, I just get news in chunks from Twitter
(good enough for me).

------
hoggle
You should try David Allen's GTD system. I'm pretty angry at myself for not
having tried to understand and apply it earlier (had been reading about it for
many years before..) it really is a great holistic concept to give structure
to your most precious finite resources (brain, time).

Also delete your RSS reader, loopback HN and other "educational" sites to
localhost (subscribe to [http://www.hndigest.com](http://www.hndigest.com)
instead) and try to get back into reading books again.

Good luck!

~~~
coned88
Thanks a lot. I do suffer from reading HN and reddit too much. Sometimes I
just keep consuming content. It's crazy. There's some benefit to it but
overall there's not. I'd probably be better if I spent time focusing on one
thing,

Thanks for hndigest I hadn't heard of it before. I have to say though for me
the comments are the best part of HN.

------
40pdev
I want to second the advice to write. That helps me a lot. Pick any of your
hundreds of interest or articles. Reserve some time for it, lets say one hour.
Study / read for 30-40 mins. And then use the rest of the time to write a
summary. That is the hard part and forces you to concentrate and really
understand the subject. It also clears out a lot of subjects because you will
notice much faster what you are really interested in. Ideally blog about it so
you have the pressure to write something decent.

------
smokel
People may give you the advice to determine what is relevant to you, and then
focus on that. Unfortunately, finding out what is important requires wisdom,
and this will make you want to read books and papers again.

With respect to this paradoxical situation, I found reading the Tao Te Ching
very interesting. It suggests that you should stop focussing on wisdom and
simply accept that things will go one way or the other. This might give you
some rest.

If taoism is a bridge too far, then you may want to get started in meditation
or mindfulness.

~~~
coned88
Taoism isin't too far. I once read the Tao of Pooh and thought the ideas were
great. I think my conflict is that information allows things to change.
Decisions can be made given a better understanding.

I'll check out the Tao Te Ching book. Thanks.

~~~
gerbilly
> Decisions can be made given a better understanding.

This might be the root of the problem. You have to accept that most of the
time you need to make decisions with your _current_ understanding.

There are some situations where you will need to seek information in order to
make a better decision. (Trust yourself, you will know the difference
instinctively.)

In those cases gather only the information you need to do a good enough job.

Decide what is important to you and ignore the rest.

Also focus on people and friendhsips, sports even. The human mind isn't meant
to work without involving the body at the same time.

(I dare you to check your iphone or think about your reading list while trying
to surf a wave for example :-) )

------
cyanbane
I got to a similar point about 2-3 years ago. Whenever I have a task that I
need to focus on I go into what I call "5 minute mode". From :00-:05 of the
hour I am free to check email/twitter, call someone back, find articles to
mark for reading later, etc (Dopamine hits). Then :06-:59 = "in the zone"
time.

This gets harder in an office environment, but usually some headphones, a
don't bother sign, and shutting down all communication channels get's it into
other people's heads.

------
useful
I rock climb because when you are in fight or flight, you don't think about
anything but that next hold. It lets me reset and turn off everything else for
a short time. Participating in endurance sports gives me time to think to
myself and prioritize/concentrate what I want to do during the rest of the
day. A list of daily goals helps when I'm really overloaded.

I also don't watch TV and I've removed most infinite scroll apps from my
phone.

~~~
simonswords82
I skydive for this exact same reason. During freefall I get up to 1 minute of
being 100% tuned out from the world and it's a bliss I've yet to find
elsewhere.

------
Grepsy
The state you describe sounds very familiar to me. What helped me a great deal
was to simply stop drinking coffee.

The first few days after stopping my concentration was completely destroyed, I
couldn't focus at all. After about 2 days things started clearing up and I got
back my calm and focus.

Most of the people I know consume coffee all day long, every day, and don't
seem to be affected in the same way I am. Just thought I'll mention it, in
case it might help!

~~~
coned88
Good point. I can give it a try. Thanks

------
ghantila
I had the same problem. I solved it by trimming down to one thing and doing,
learning and reading about only that one thing.

Remember: Jack of all trades is a master of none.

You want to do everything or do just one thing and be a master in it?

I'd say, try following Google's Philosophy #2
[https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/philosophy/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/philosophy/)

------
antonislav
Part of the problem is that you don't have time to think _deeply_ about
things, because there is to much to think about. The solution is simple: drop
almost everything except what is most important to you and allocate plenty of
time to for it. (This solution is simple but not easily implemented.)

A good read on this topic is "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our
Brains" by Nicholas Carr

------
m52go
I bet you could be _more_ informed and successful in your career by reading
only a small portion of all the content you have picked out.

Anything vital you do miss on will come to you through the social network you
could be building instead of reading through all this stuff.

Moreover, reading more won't give you a point of view. It'll only give you
others' points of views. Only you can create your own point of view.

~~~
coned88
It's possible I could do better by really narrowing it down but who knows. I
am pretty good at what I do because of it I think. I'll have to think about
it.

As for the POV's. isn't that what we all do, throw around others point of
views? I wasn't educated in a way that fostered original idea.

------
runbun
1) Step away from the Internet for 2 weeks. Limit yourself to 30 minutes a day
for essentials.

2) Get a lot more sleep. Sleep is needed to give your brain time to process
and organize.

3) During the two weeks, pick a single book and read it. This will help train
your mind to concentrate on one task.

You will feel much better after 2 weeks and will then be in a better position
to reevaluate your browsing habits.

------
snarfy
> I like to be informed.

It sounds like you need to be informed and that you'll be unhappy if you
aren't.

Now if you replace 'informed' in the above sentence with anything else (e.g.
cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, sex, etc) you'll notice it sounds like an
addiction, because it is. Anything that makes you feel good can be addictive,
and learning new things feels good.

------
knappador
Build something. Nothing leads to prioritization like optimizing brutally for
ROI on time. Is it the most pertinent thing you can be doing? When you really
lock yourself into a lean-startup REPL of building, measuring, and repeating,
valuable tasks float to the top and the contrast in value propositions becomes
so extreme that nothing else is visible.

------
seekingcharlie
To me, it sounds like your problem is that everything that you have at this
very moment, isn't enough. Thus, you feel like you have to look out into the
world to fill yourself.

I agree with others, I would definitely recommend you try to meditate several
times a week. Start at 15 mins every day & work your way up.

Also, exercise more!

------
drawkbox
Rescuetime, notes/documents for offloading and this talk helps:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAwDWe7OIF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAwDWe7OIF8)
(John Cleese on Creativity and the Open and Closed mode). Basically you are on
Open too much.

~~~
coned88
Great thanks.

------
meesterdude
there are only so many waking hours in the day. If you want to read articles
and books that time has to come from somewhere else, or be doing while you do
something already (like use the bathroom).

Also you need a system, that's NOT your brain, that you can trust to hold all
this stuff. All the todos and things to watch and priorities and life goals.
That way you're free to think about other things. I ended up building a web
platform to help me manage it all, but I do not recommend the same path.
Still, you may find there is software out there that works for you that can
help you offload all this stuff into. GTD is a popular methodology and it has
plenty of good tips (like capturing everything) that are hugely beneficial
even of themselves.

~~~
coned88
Great thanks. I'll look around. You're right.

------
jmtame
I know that feeling. Check out this book, which talks a lot about focus and
discipline: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Practicing-Mind-Developing-
Discipl...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Practicing-Mind-Developing-
Discipline/dp/1608680908)

~~~
cmnzs
I just got this on my kindle since it seems to have pretty good reviews. Your
comment doesn't really outright say that the book helped you become more
focused and disciplined - would you say that it did or didn't?

~~~
jmtame
I'm intentionally taking 4 days to reply to your comment because I didn't feel
like I allowed enough time to say. In fact, I still don't think I've waited
long enough, but I do at least feel good to say that it is working.

There's a few things going on, and they're specific to me.

Primarily, I'm a judgmental person. And mostly to myself. I judge myself
really hard for not doing enough or going fast enough. This book is teaching
me to stop doing that, even though it may sound "heroic" to always push
myself. I think I get that impression from elite athletes, and I think "well I
should be doing that to myself so I can be the best at whatever I'm doing." At
some point along the way, I forgot that most of what I learned wasn't the
result of that type of thinking. I learned everything from speaking to
programming simply by doing, and not by judging myself in the process.

I would also say I'm impatient, but I think that's the same thing as saying
I'm judgmental.

This book is like written Adderall in that it causes the same calming effect.
It teaches you that it's okay to slow down and just do, and not worry about
anything else in the present moment. I know that sounds kind of cheesy and
"Zen" like, but I definitely have (self diagnosed) ADHD and I operate on two
modes: one where I'm being productive and doing, and one where I'm learning.
It's really hard to context switch between the two. So it helps to know that
when I'm learning, or doing certain types of activities that I'm not used to
doing, it's okay to go slower and not stress out about my perceived lack of
progress. The net result: my work IMO actually ends up being better, and
interestingly I learn faster because I'm not trying to do that so much.

Hope this helps. Your experience may be different.

------
bnjs
This is a real problem that many people experience and it's only getting
bigger. I'm developing a solution for myself and soon opening it to others.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter (@bnjs) if you're interested in
joining a closed beta.

------
readme
Keep them, but don't think of it as a reading list. Think of it as a database
of things you've created which might be worth reading.

You can't learn a million things at once, you've got to pick a topic and
focus.

------
ponyous
I have no answer, but I found this really interesting, since we are one of the
first generations with this problem. We are yet to determine the best way to
solve this, which will probably be very interesting!

~~~
cmnzs
I wonder if we really are the first generation to have this type of problem,
though. It seems reasonable to me that people would be overwhelmed by the
sheer volume of books published over the decades preceding the widespread
adoption of the internet. There's just tons of material out there. Even in the
academic world, the amount of papers published every year - even before the
internet - would probably overwhelm anyone if they tried to keep on top of it.

I'd love to see some pre-internet articles complaining about the pace of
publishing and strategies for coping with the onslaught of information at that
time. It seems reasonable that it would exist, and I'm sure we'd all find it
rather quaint :)

------
vijaykumar13
Good observation, I think most of us under the same situation with varying
degrees of effect. Time to do meditation more regularly, and start building
more self control for Internet and some other things ;-)

------
merlinsbrain
Turning off my phone between 8pm-8am forces me to look elsewhere for
entertainment/reading. I've been using my kindle more and sleeping better.
Sometimes the simple things work.

~~~
coned88
I kinda do this as well. I don't really use the phone from 6pm to 10am unless
I get a call. Reading some fiction before bed does help me sleep better. Even
so I find reading still tires me out as if it's no different than reading an
article.

------
PSeitz
Identify the sites which consume a lot of time without beeing worth the time
and then don't visit them anymore. For me it was facebook and all classical
news pages.

------
sysk
Perhaps this could be of some inspiration?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudeism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudeism)

~~~
coned88
That's actually pretty great. One of the best books I have ever read is the
Tao of Pooh. I forget Taoism sometimes but it does feel right. maybe it's time
to take the Pooh book off the shelf again for another read.

------
CodeWriter23
Shift your focus to being a problem solver, not a retainer of a massive
knowledge bank. Then go solve a problem. A singular problem. Lather, rinse,
repeat.

------
ramgorur
simple, believe in these facts --

fact 1. sturgeon's law
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law)),
[strugeon's law is actually recursive]

fact 2. You can't enjoy all the interesting things in the universe in a given
time instance, so if you feel you are missing something let it go.

fact 3. there is no difference between facebook and public toilet.

------
pragone
Writer it all down. Read GTD, getting the required software, and stick to it.
Most important step for you would be a complete brain dump.

~~~
liw
I'll point out that there is no required software for GTD. You can implement
the system for yourself with just paper and pen, or a text file and an editor.
(I use a few text files and an editor.)

------
PSeitz
Identify the sites which are not worth the time and stop browsing them. For me
it was facebook and all classical news pages.

------
gpanger
Meditate every day. I like the Calm app.

~~~
cmnzs
The Calm app is great - makes for a really refreshing break during the work
day.

------
brador
Imagine what your life would be like if you never saved those 800 articles.
Feel happier? Go delete them.

------
andybak
Go to your doctor and ask to be tested for undiagnosed Adult ADHD.

------
davelnewton
Ten books queued on the Kindle would be a blessing :(

------
w_t_payne
Yeah, I'm the same. It stresses me the hell out.

------
dunk010
By stopping reading Hacker News.

~~~
coned88
That is a big source. :)

------
molszanski
coned88, I am pretty surprised with you situation. You have done a marvelous
job on self diagnosing the trouble, but you don’t see the solution. In most
cases understanding and describing the problem is by far the hardest part. So
you are 90% ready to solve the issue.

Disclaimer: you are a smart person, so I will use a couple of thinking
shortcuts. Just so you know. You don’t want to read a book, don’t you? (:
First of all, lets handle this: > One of which is directed to what I am
actively doing and one below it which seems to process information in a never
ending manner.

# Thought flies

„Buzzing” in your head, right? Those thoughts are like flies. They fly around,
sometimes they sit quietly, sometimes they come back and sabotage everything.
You can’t rest properly, you can’t work. It hurts us because of context and
task switching costs.

This drains your „brain mana” and we have roughly 3-4 hours of highly
productive brain activity per day. And there is only way to stop this leak:
kill those flies. The best way to handle this is by dumping everything on
paper. Even better, on a single page. A3, anyone? Reading books, articles,
tasks, meetings with friends, everything. Directed graphs (a form of a mind
map) IMO works best.

And when you finish it, stuff suddenly becomes manageable. This will help you
to get rid of the big issues. Small ones hurt also.

To get rid of the small ones, you have to have a Single Point of Truth. A
place where you store stuff. Your head is not the right place for it. If you
are doing some work or enjoying a movie and suddenly a fly-thought comes and
distracts you from working or resting, just write it and forget about it.

# IRL techniques

There are some tools/techniques I use to handle 90% of thoughts, issues:

Home related tasks: Wunderlist. Tax documents, shopping lists goes there. If
it is not there it doesn’t exit.

Work related tasks: Asana. If it is not there, it just doesn't exit. Simple as
that.

Online articles: There 2 types. Might be useful later or must read it now. If
I just want to store I use Evernote page save or Instapaper and archive. If I
want to read it I simply read it or send to Instapaper. Then I just read them
in bulk on Kindle.

Email: I use Gmail and Mailbox. First of all Gmail. I really use „Archive” a
lot. If I have read what I have or replied I hit „Archive” and forget about
it. With Mailbox it is even better. If I want to postpone messages I simply
snooze them a day or week. Often, they get outdated quickly and then I just
archive them. Empty mailbox —> empty head. I never a have a thought fly about
email. I know that everything I need will be there when I open or want to open
it. For any thought fly there is a compartment. Sometimes you just put it on
hold and place it on your corkboard and sometimes you just dump it into a
giant, searchable archive.

So in a nutshell, you just have to clean your head and move stuff to another
storage vehicle. Even the best mind memory is nothing compared to a pen and
paper.

# Filtering

The second thing you should think about is filtering. I would recommend
reading a small article about Theory of constraints or you can go wild and
read (it is a one evening book) The Goal by M. Goldratt. Shrinking a whole
book into your case: you can’t have more incoming stuff (articles, ideas) than
you process. Otherwise, you will have a huge traffic jam in your head. And
adding more items is the worst thing you can do.

So you can just cut off the supply of new and just process the old stuff. Or
just get rid of that. We are all information hoarders. But there is a secret:
a world will not break if we just purge some stuff. Less is more.

Good Luck!

~~~
coned88
Awesome post. Thanks so much.

~~~
molszanski
I will check this thread in a month. Write me back how everything works for
you (:

------
dm03514
Meditate

~~~
coned88
I have tried mindfulness. I get really agitated really quickly because I am
not doing something actively. I then stopped. Is that all normal?

~~~
xhedley
Disclaimer - I practise mindfulness but I'm not an expert.

Yes it's normal to feel agitated initially. If life is focussed on doing and
achieving stuff then deliberately stopping and deliberately not doing anything
feels wrong. But isn't it interesting that your mind reacts that way?

I think of mindfulness as a way to be able to observe my mind, to notice what
it does, to notice what feelings I have (like agitation sometimes).

What specific mindfulness exercise are you doing when you get agitated?
Focussing on the breath can be helpful because it tends to calm people.

------
bra-ket
cancel your Internet account for good and return the modem

~~~
coned88
It's actually quite valid. I have taken vacations from work before with the
sole intent of staying away from computers since I work on them all day. Guess
what it never worked out. I always went back to the computer and spent the
entire vacation on it.

------
ashleyp
One word. Meditation.

------
iron_codex
( Continued From Below -> Sorry again for the length)

You have to be tough. You say you want an opinion? You like to communicate
with people and discuss things? You want to be well established in your
beliefs and thoughts? Start with being well established in your actions and
your own thought process. As it seems to hold contradicting opinions to what
you believe needs to be focused on or done.

I too was diagnosed with ADHD. I was scattered. I felt lost in an open world
of activities as well as information. I tried management techniques, I tried
meditation, I tried mini vacations (which are never unjustified by the way). I
tried everything. I disappointed with my foundation and control of my life.

I even allowed myself to endorse taking Adderall. Which actually did more harm
than good because I soon realized that yes...yes I'm hyper focused, I'm hyper
focused installing yet a new program I don't need. I'm hyper focused digesting
yet another topic that I only meant to glance at to start with. I'm hyper
focused doing the exact same habits and mistakes that I did to start with! How
has that happened?

It happens because at the end of the day regardless of the method you try to
use to maintain control there is only one truth. You are either doing what you
need to do, or you ALLOW yourself to be distracted. It’s a binary truth. It's
on or off, and guess what? It's all up to YOU. Not a meditational leader, not
a friend, not a spouse, and not an article...not even this comment. It will
never be up to anyone other than yourself and the development of the ability
to take a thought or a physical distraction at the moment it presents itself
and eliminating it entirely. Truly saying NO! NO! NO! Repeatedly in your mind
louder than the thought fighting for your attention. You've seen that move
"Yes! Man" starring Jim Carrey most likely I would say. In the movie a man
encounters a program developed to expand his mind and opportunities by simply
saying "Yes" to them. How convenient it turned out for him. He went on a
romantic adventure filled with spoiling homeless men with material
possessions, late night dance clubs under the ambience of exotically non-
rhyming music, experienced the spectacle activity called "Running
Photography", and fell in love. Take a cue from that movie if you feel much
too spread out and instead of allowing your mind to say "Yes! Man" to each new
thought and ambition that presents itself force your mind to say "No! Man"
without any other option.

Be a man, be a NO man. Be grounded in your actions and thoughts and train that
habit and nature. It takes a while but it can and will happen because
physiologically as a human you are designed to adapt. You can undo all those
years of allowing your mind to say yes to everything the internet and the
world had to offer. Realistically it may take just as long in a worst case
scenario to un-train those habits and force them out with the mindset you
really want. But in the training process you will actually be having an
immediate effect from the very first time you say NO in your mind and
eliminate an adversary. So that by the time you feel you have sharp and well-
honed mindset you set out to achieve you in-directly demolished every other
little thing on your life list as a result.

That's all I can offer. Again I say it might not be the optimal method for
anyone in the world except myself. However the logic odd's and chance say
that’s not true, and who knows it just might be for you after all...or you
whoever may have stumbled upon this comment 73 clicks later in browsing Hacker
News, you who meant to come online strictly for Christmas shopping only as it
is last minute once again this year, or you who have no idea how you got here
to this final sentence in the first place.

_Iron_Codex_

~~~
ctoscano
You are not alone.

Some words I took from your post were that “[T]there is only one truth. You
[…] ALLOW yourself to be distracted.” and “It will never be up to anyone other
than yourself[.]”

There is a theory that our default state of mind is that “racing state” that
coned88 described, that most people are like that most of the time. Only few
people, like both you are coned88 notice that it is happening. Fewer still
learn, internalize, and practice noticing when their mind wanders and bringing
their focus back to the task at hand, or as you put it, being a man.

So in short, yes coned88, you just purge thoughts, actions, and literature
that are not moving you towards accomplishing the task at hand.

This can be taught. Or, as you put it, “[P]hysiologically as a human you are
designed to adapt” and, more or less, we all have the same basic physiology.

In response to coned88’s first question “Any advice on what I should do?”

coned88’s, I’m tempted to tell you about my personal story, but I will focus
on the advice and try to rely on my credibility as a stranger on the internet
and citations for credibility.

There are secular meditation techniques based on Tibetan Buddhism has been
shown to increase the practitioners ability be aware of shifts in focus. I’m
primarily citing personal experience.

I’d like to recommend a book, a course, with instructions to help you increase
your focus, but I don’t know of one. The books I have read focus on managing
stress and healing emotional wounds instead of improving mental performance.
The vast majority of stuff out there uses a lot of poetry, jargon, and
generalizations I cannot recommend, but this lifehacker article was the best I
found[6]. I hope it helps you.

My secular interpretation of Buddhism is that they used fables to codify
knowledge before they had writing. Information is easier to memorize that
way[4]. Monks were trained to decode the knowledge from the fables. Or at
least that is my understanding.

Considering the short history of psychology in the West[5], as well as the
cults, self help gurus, and experiments with drugs in the 60’s, it is still
hard to find credible sources that validate meditation. Advances in neural
imaging, as well as a growing psychological literature, as well as my personal
experimentation has lead me to believe that specific meditative practices lead
to increased awareness and control of mental focus.

“Our data indicate that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in
part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact
you.” –Christopher Moore, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of
Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT as quoted by the MIT Press[1]

A lot of the current research[2] focuses on using fMRI machines to see what is
happening in the brain during meditation.

"What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the
brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic
says, according the BBC article. How you use your brain has been shown to
physically change over time based on how it is used. "One thing that
meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates
attentional skills," Dr Josipovic says.

[1]
[http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505)

[2] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-12661646](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646)

[3] [http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-
fallaci...](http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-
fallacies/87-fallacy-of-composition)

[4]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en)

[5] William James, Link to Harvard.edu
[http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD](http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD)

[6] [http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-
like...](http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like-focus)

------
iron_codex
Read your questions, skimmed the comments and decided I'd share a technique
for life management. A warning, it is a very, very long comment and I
apologize sincerely. This matter is just a personally experienced one and I
possess strong opinions regarding it.

You do not have to read it, and I cannot make you do so, but I highly suggest
that you do. The information I provide may not be for everyone. I understand
this. It may not be for you. That's okay. But as for my own and personal
journey it has proven itself time to time to the point that I now longer look
for a solution as it has proven it's effectiveness time and time again.

The biggest suggestion I can offer you is to consider what my father taught me
at a very young age and continues to do so even now in my mid-twenties.

Be a man.

It's as simple as that. What does "Being a man" entail you ask? It means being
TOUGH. It means to see a problem and instead of ignoring or denying you accept
that you DO have a problem on hand.

That's the first step. The first step is to always take the first step in
solving that problem. Let's look at an example, any volunteers? Oh wait, why
not you? You browse all these comments that provide you with multiple methods
that can "solve" or remedy your problem throughout the day and night, you go
to Google to search up on a few of them that stand out. Dissatisfied you come
back and browse more ways, then it’s back to Google....then before you know it
you've went 20 links in to 20 different websites over the course of a few
days. It is then you have a new problem. You get overwhelmed with the
different ways to go about it and all the little details involved with each
one. Now we have gone from the pot to the kettle. There is a reason for this.
It is because the core problem is not what we expose ourselves to, it is what
we allow our minds to waste it's time processing whether directly exposed or
as the result of a thought itself. You said you felt like you had a layer in
your mind that knows what you need to do, and a separate layer that is
absorbing everything around you and filing it away regardless of what you are
doing. Therefore the most effective result of any method you try for fixing
your issue should have the ultimate result of COMPILING both of those layers
into ONE which allows you to truly absorb everything about whatever it is you
are doing at that very moment. What I have to do personally will sound a bit
odd. I have had to become cold in nature. Allowing my mind to only process the
things that I have decided need to be done for the day. I accept no other
information. I mentally, and sometimes verbally, say NO to any outside
influence that would deter me from what I set out to accomplish. Over time
your mind will be honed to the point where you truly do feel a sense of
control over the direction of your life. (Disclaimer: I do however allow
myself exceptions for the things that directly and sometimes indirectly affect
any of the core components in life: Health, Family, Spirituality, and
Financials. If a decision I say no to can either really affect one of those in
a negative way, or if saying no to taking an unexpected opportunity could
truly benefit one of those core components immediately or in the long run I
take make that decision on the spot based upon that criteria and importance.)

Let's look at an example situation for how important it is to have a well-
developed mental toughness and the ability to say NO.

You wake up, its 8am and you decide it’s time for you to have your breakfast.
You read an article and digest it for a few minutes or even debate it for a
few minutes with a companion. We're doing good so far it's been 15 minutes no
upsets we are well on our way to getting what needs done today.

Now our mind reflects upon our agenda for the day which we liberally emptied
onto paper last night. We look down this list of things we have to do and
while we are sitting there suddenly a single word, let's say "word document"
if we have to type a paper that day, on the list stands out to us in our mind
and triggers a wonderment over something related to that. We think to
ourselves "I wonder if Open Office software has greater advantages over
Microsoft word?". After pondering about that relation we decide to research it
a little. We fire up the laptop to do a little quick research to just satisfy
curiosity. Well what do you know, Open Office really has established a rival
status in the word processing enterprise. We should give that a spin. So you
start the download, run through the install impatiently as you know you need
to leave soon to attend to your list of things to do. That's okay Open Office
is going to simplify some of the things I do so it's going to save me time in
the long run.

After installing the software we fire it up to check it out. Oh pretty neat!
We browse the tools, definitely got some handy tools for what I need done. We
decide to create a document just for fun and testing. File -> New Document ->
Clickety Clack Clickety Clack we've got a short little paragraph about how
awesome Open Document is in a matter of minutes. Aha! That’s very nice...hey
wait! Let’s make an agenda to prettify what I've wrote on paper. Everybody
knows a professional looking agenda makes you want to accomplish these things
more just as a large sparkling trophy will oust a smiley sticker any day of
the week. We realize we need to save some time, so we decide to outsource the
document template to one prebuilt and just fill it on in. So back to the file
menu it is, then we realize the selection of good agenda templates is much too
limited. Ah, I know we will just Google up one real quick. So that we do.
About 5 sites and 72 clicks later we have a template to suit our taste. We
begin our transfer of the crumply paper agenda to a beautiful little digital
one that will soon be on crisp white paper. We spell check in case anyone
peaks, punctuate in case anyone cares, and tweak the fonts a bit for
readability. We look at the time, it’s after 11am. We justify that with the
fact that having this new and beautiful agenda will help us get things done.
We print and admire our fine creation. While we sit that at the table admiring
our warm from the printer agenda...a specific word on that paper stands out to
us in our mind...and we ponder something related to it...

And down again the rabbit hole do we go, as we lack the self-control and fine-
tuned ability of saying NO. We lack being tough enough to say, "You know what
maybe open office can help we will have to find out tonight when we have what
we set out to do done." Or even cutting the though off at the knees as soon as
it appears in our mind and strongly saying "I cannot think about that right
now." Letting that thought dissolve through sheer intent. Not accepting or
allowing its presence any longer, getting up from that table and walking out
that door at 8:30am instead of looking up at 11:30am and realizing that even
though we have accomplished something new, and even somewhat related to the
things we do on the daily basis we have never advanced any closer to having
what needs to be done than when we started 3 hours ago.

Further down the road after this process repeats itself over and over through
the years, and we go to clock in at our subpar job of help desk support we
pause...and our mind for an instant reflects upon our situation of being
nowhere near where we expected to be at such an older age. We process this
thought further and remember all of the little moments we had a choice between
an option that would have taken us farther then we are now and one that took
us in circles but seemed a lot more interesting at that single moment in time,
and we are faced with the reality that we chose the interesting circle more
than we should have. A lot more.

(..Continued)

~~~
sfbayguy
Stay away and learn to say No. Don't care. This way you will reflect on only
the most critical.

------
curiously
it is overloading your brain because they are not essential, need to know
information that you are forcing down your own throat.

If the information is not urgent enough for you to know at that moment then
it's not worth it. As time passes so does the value of the information.

This is entirely controllable and one must stop falling to the prey of
information greed.

~~~
coned88
Sometimes though I'll see an article about a very interesting topic. I really
do want to read it but then I see it's many pages long so I'll set it to read
later and then I never read it or at least don't for a while.

You're right about the value of the info. There are times I'll go back and
then just delete it because I don't value it anymore.

------
nether
Meditate, go on 5-10 hour hikes, and put down the screens.

~~~
coned88
I do go on hikes but not anywhere near that length. Maybe that will be it.
Thanks

------
dschiptsov
There are many good answers, like Vipassana, Dzongchen, even Yoga - any of
derivatives of Upanishads and Buddha's insights. The problems is that for most
people it means nothing, or just a mythology, so they dismiss it with a first
mention.

This could be rationalized, because, like it is with every "good idea" in the
world, "other people" piled up such mountains of nonsense, and pushed that
nonsense using the best manipulative techniques available to humanity, that
some people developed an aversion, like for ads. You could think of teachings
of various prophets or programming paradigms, economics or even physics and
medicine - crowds of idiots ruined and discredited everything.

The essence of most of eastern "spiritual traditions" is remarkably
straightforward - "stay alone and use your own brain". It is that simple. The
difference is only in wording . Some traditions call it "primordial
awareness", some call it "our true nature", others call it "god within" or
"That" or "Tao" \- it is not important. Like they said "Truth is one (it
points back to us - to "our nature") the wise call it by different names".

So, stay alone and use (develop) your own brain. It doesn't mean some radical
bullshit like going in a desert. Rather it is more like Kerouac's "On the
road", which is about being an observer of what is. Kerouac, by the way,
didn't get Buddhism - he mere confused himself with that popular Tibetan
folklore, but he was intuitive _practitioner_.

Another example could be like this - stop reading all that nonsense in
internet - blogs, forums, HN and do read one or two great books, like SICP or
PAIP or watch a serious course, like CS61A on youtube. These courses and books
are for developing your own understanding of fundamental principles. Then you
would see what piles of nonsense are 99% of these internet postings.

So, the answer is _not_ go to Vipassana retreat (btw, "retreat" means
_solitude_ (to avoid distractions), so all these groups is mere business) or
to turn off all the electronic devices. It means to stop paying attention to
_blah-blah-blah_ around you (that's why ancient sages went to forests or
mountains) and develop yourself.

Basically, it is about using (focus) your own awareness the way children
before age of 4-5 do, before their minds would be polluted by piles of words
and artificial, wrong concepts they learn from others. This ability of "direct
observation and knowledge extraction" which is the very essence of so-called
"our human nature" is, roughly, what they worship in Dzongchen.

All the answers are thousands years old.

Oh, by the way, two-three weeks in a solitude easy trekking in Nepal
(Annapurna Circuit trek or Jiri-Gokyo trek) makes wonders. You could "realize"
how good it is to be alone most of the time.

------
Umn55
The Decline of the West

OSWALD SPENGLER BELIEVED that he stood at the cusp of a new wave of historical
thinking. Whereas in the past, historians had been content to gather facts,
chart broad cultural movements, and take the flow of time as consisting of
events that were causally related, Spengler had a vision that made these
circumstances not merely existent, but necessary. The "morphology of culture"
that Spengler conceived made history not merely a past, but a destiny, for
each culture contained within it an essence that inevitably must reveal
itself. As he states in his introduction,

Each Culture has its own possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen,
decay, and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one
mathematics, but many. Each is in its deepest essence different from the
others, each limited in duration and self-contained....

Spengler felt that this insight must force historians to approach their work
in an entirely different light. For he did not believe that a developing
culture borrowed or integrated values or systems from past ones, at least not
in their true nature. Each is working out its own unique being, and if, for
example, the Greeks borrowed certain mathematical concepts from the Egyptians,
it was with an entirely different understanding of what they meant and what
they were for. To Spengler, each culture in the world's history had it's own
unique "soil" in which to develop and grow. The physical terrain, proximity of
neighbors, natural resources, and other factors influence the manner in which
the "seed" of the inhabiting people unfolds not only geographically but also
socially and economically. This, coupled with the unique temporal period and
particular population of each great culture, serves to produce a social
organism that is distinct from all others, just as one variety of plant is
distinct from the rest.

However, Spengler maintained that the underlying pattern that each followed
could be revealed through analysis, especially through studying the art,
music, and architecture of each and discovering analogues.

 _I hope to show that without exception all great creations and forms in
religion, art, politics, social life, economy and science appear, fulfill
themselves, and die down contemporaneously in all the cultures; that the inner
structure of one corresponds strictly with that of all others; that there is
not a single phenomenon of deep physiognomic importance in the record of one
for which we could not find a counterpart in the record of every other; and
that this counterpart is to be found under a characteristic form and in a
perfectly definite chronological position._

[http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/Spengler/SpenglerDoc.ht...](http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/Spengler/SpenglerDoc.html)

------
websurfshop
Here's my advice if you want peace.

"And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is
no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion
of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the
whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every
secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Eccl. 12:12-14

