[HN Gopher] Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket
___________________________________________________________________
Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket
Author : pps
Score : 292 points
Date : 2023-03-28 12:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oliverburkeman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oliverburkeman.com)
| acomjean wrote:
| In my younger years I subscribed to the New Yorker and the
| Economist. Both full of interesting stuff, but a torrent. I had
| to unsubscribe as I kept on thinking, I'll finish that one later,
| but never did before the next one arrived. Great magazines for a
| flight, where time seems boundless, and you were connection-less,
| before the internet found its way onto airplanes.
|
| You have to filter. Music, youtube, book content is created
| faster than you can consume in your limited time on this planet.
| I read mainly for information, and try spend more time with
| friends/ hobbies. Still catch some TV, but I try to limit.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| The New Yorker is great when you have the time. It seems like
| the Economist has really trimmed the article length over the
| years though, probably in response to web analytics.
| uoaei wrote:
| The best tip I've heard is similar to that in the article, and is
| basically a mandate to acknowledge and consciously reject the
| sunk cost fallacy.
|
| In simple words, don't be afraid to put down a book before you've
| finished it if it hasn't seized you in the first pages.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| Very much agree, no shame in dropping a work you started if it
| isn't as good as it seemed. Also skipping ahead in books and
| skimming articles can help.
| stcroixx wrote:
| That could never work for me personally. A book isn't something
| that's uniform in quality or engagement throughout, in fact
| they're often predictably lopsided where the the first few
| pages are getting you familiar with the characters and setting.
| I also have to know the ending to even begin to think about the
| book as a whole. Never not finished a book myself and I read a
| lot - can't say I loved every book I've ever read, but I don't
| regret the time spent finishing them, even the least enjoyable
| ones.
| uoaei wrote:
| Authors pay a lot of attention to the first few pages of
| their books, and try to expose the best aspects of their
| writing style there in order to hook you in. I try to remain
| conscious of this as I read in order to better anticipate the
| style and content curation that follows.
|
| > I don't regret the time spent finishing them
|
| I think this is a different take than many others would have
| on the topic of reading. I know I regret spending time
| reading things that do not "spark joy", to put it pithily.
| stcroixx wrote:
| There's a wide range of emotions and impact I expect from
| good writing - joy is nice, but hardly required for me. A
| couple of my favorites I've read several times like East of
| Eden or Brothers Karamazov end up being more like
| fundamental changes to who I am rather just experiences of
| emotion, neither being very joyous.
| sfink wrote:
| For fiction, I flip a book open to about 1/3 of the way
| through and read a paragraph or two, which generally tells
| me everything I need to know. That avoids the
| unrepresentative intro portion--I appreciate a punchy
| and/or gripping opening scene, but it's not very well
| correlated to how much I'll enjoy the rest of the text.
|
| It's weird, there aren't that many ways of choosing a set
| of words to convey something, and yet an author's voice and
| style comes through roughly the same no matter where I
| sample from (except for the overworked parts, which usually
| includes the beginning.) And it usually comes through
| strong, which is great: sometimes I think my reading diet
| is mostly about sampling a variety of good-tasting styles
| of mental processing. (Sadly, that does mean that co-
| written books hardly ever work for me. The voice is
| muddled. It's rare that authors are able to meld their work
| truly synergistically.)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Sadly, that does mean that co-written books hardly ever
| work for me. The voice is muddled. It's rare that authors
| are able to meld their work truly synergistically.
|
| I thought the authors of the Expanse[0] series did a
| pretty good job with that. AFAICT (but I have no way to
| confirm this), they split the storytelling so that each
| plot arc is consistent and speaks with a single voice.
|
| I can certainly see how multiple authors _could_ muddle
| the "voice", but I think the quality (or otherwise) is
| more a function of storyboarding/universe creation and
| how well that's done collectively by the authors.
|
| Please note I'm not really disagreeing with you and, as a
| rule, your observation jibes with mine. Although (as I
| mentioned) there are some exceptions.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Never not finished a book myself and I read a lot - can't
| say I loved every book I've ever read, but I don't regret the
| time spent finishing them, even the least enjoyable ones.
|
| I agree. I read a lot of books too, and I've only given up on
| a few. Mostly I don't remember what they were (after all, I
| disliked them enough not to finish them), but _BattleField
| Earth_ [0] comes to mind. Gosh, what an awful read. Never did
| finish that one. Ugh.
|
| Other than those few, I'm not sad I finished any of the books
| I wasn't that into.[1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth_(novel)
|
| [1] N.B.: I'm referring to _fiction_ exclusively here.
| petarb wrote:
| As someone wanting to read lots of books and articles, this
| really resonates with me. Not having to read everything but
| picking and choosing a few here and there
| HPsquared wrote:
| My to-do list is not a big truck! It's not something you just
| dump something on... It's a series of tubes!
| pps wrote:
| Interesting, could you tell us more? :)
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| I need sandbags because the bookshelf dam is bursting through the
| overflow gates.
|
| No, really, I have stopped buying books because I've ran out of
| room.
|
| I guess I'm going to have to sell and give away some to make room
| for new ones. )':
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| For me, it's much more rewarding to find those "needles" and add
| them to my reading list -- than to actually read them. I.e. the
| dopamine hit of finding something new/interesting -- that's the
| thrill.
|
| I guess I'm ok with that -- it's hard to force myself to process
| items from the river. Any tips on that?
| petecooper wrote:
| I'm mildly disgusted (and entirely unsurprised) with myself that
| I just added this to a reading list for later.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It's cool man, let it just float on by
| petecooper wrote:
| ...tell that to my 994 bookmarked 'read later' URLs. Very
| much a case of best intentions but woeful discipline.
| eimrine wrote:
| How many of them has already rot? I've found that 70% of
| ten-year-ago bookmarks of mine do not exist anymore,
| especially if it was a weblog or a youtube video.
| mxuribe wrote:
| I enjoyed reading this, but was left with the same feeling that i
| had at the end of the 1983 film WarGames, namely: "...the only
| winning move is not to play..." I acknowledge this post is not
| exactly saying that...but it still feels a little flattening to
| arrive at that point. (With all apologies and respect to the
| author, i'm referring to my feelings on the suggestions, that's
| all.)
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| I agree with your summary but to me it seems like a useful
| point of insight. Analogous to the saying "when you find
| yourself in a hole that's getting deeper the first thing to do
| is stop digging". Something that seems like common sense but is
| hard to grasp when you're in the hole, unless someone
| explicitly points it out.
|
| One might also decide that this article is wrong, but it could
| still be worth considering the point to reject it.
| whateveruserk wrote:
| the perspective i take is more like.. "the only winning move is
| to play. not analyze how you play or hold yourself to how you
| once planned to play."
|
| here that would mean releasing things, and fully enjoying
| whatever it is you are able to read/participate in. mainly not
| grasping at everything
| nasir wrote:
| Just added this to my to read list!
| jh00ker wrote:
| Bookmarked this for later! The headline looks REALLY interesting!
| switowski wrote:
| Sounds useful, I will read it later!
| martincmartin wrote:
| Anyone have a tl;dr for this?
| shoy wrote:
| Don't sweat it, man. Stay loose.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Anyone have a tl;dr for this?
|
| Just save the link for later reading[0].
|
| [0] And who knows, you might even read it.
| longnguyen wrote:
| An interesting read! I sorta solved this with my little SaaS[0].
| I send interesting articles and RSS feeds to my Kindle, and I
| read some of them every evening before bed time.
|
| Articles never stayed in a "bucket" but they flow every day.
|
| Not worth reading, ignore it. And I can always find them later if
| needed (hint: it will never be)
|
| If you read a lot of online content, give it a try
|
| [0]: https://ktool.io
| heyoni wrote:
| How is this different than kindles own browser extension? Is it
| the conversion quality? What couldn't the extension do that
| ktool does?
| longnguyen wrote:
| Yes to conversion quality. For example, the official
| extension has a huge problem with detecting the cover. I
| fixed it with KTool.
|
| I also implemented custom parsers for many sites that use a
| "modern" frontend framework (read: SPA)
|
| And here is the main difference: ability to send RSS feeds
| and newsletters to Kindle, combine them into only 1 ebook and
| read at a specific time you set.
|
| I think it's better to compare KTool to other alternatives
| like p2k or instapaper. The official extension did an OK job
| if you don't need any features above.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I ended up treating my bookcase full of all my unread books I
| originally planned to work through like this. In this case my
| bookcase is the bucket, and I carve a stream or a river out of
| it. It's like a two step filtering process.
|
| It just probably would have been cheaper for me to just bought
| the ones I actually would read. But sometimes you can't escape
| the fantasy of you being some higher intellectual who will one
| day work through all of these books. I realize now that I
| probably will never make it through that Modern Algebra text,
| Operating Systems, or the complete collection of William
| Shakespear by the Royal Shakespear company -- so I humor myself
| while being realistic about the progress I can make.
| Hadriel wrote:
| tldr: "To return to information overload: this means treating
| your "to read" pile like a river (a stream that flows past you,
| and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there)
| instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all,
| you presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in
| the British Library - and not because there aren't an
| overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you
| that it might be your job to get through them all."
| 4pkjai wrote:
| You the reader, should treat this article like a river and read
| only the second last paragraph.
| baxtr wrote:
| You the reader should only read the second last paragraph,
| which I copied here for your convenience:
|
| _To return to information overload: this means treating your
| "to read" pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and
| from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there)
| instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After
| all, you presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the unread
| books in the British Library - and not because there aren't an
| overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to
| you that it might be your job to get through them all._
| stcroixx wrote:
| Eliminate the waste in your 'to read' pile by populating it
| the same way he suggests selecting from it - pluck a few
| choice items here and there from the river that is the
| British Library.
| [deleted]
| dmix wrote:
| I asked GPT4 to summarize the article's most important
| information into bullet points, which I find more useful than
| one paragraph summaries:
|
| > 1) The initial belief that technology would help filter out
| irrelevant information and prevent overload has not come to
| fruition; instead, people are overwhelmed by content they
| genuinely want to read.
|
| > 2) The problem lies in the fact that our filters are too
| successful, causing us to face a daily influx of interesting
| content (referred to as "haystack-sized piles of needles").
|
| > 3) Many aspects of life also involve "too many needles,"
| where we struggle to allocate our limited time and attention
| to numerous important tasks or interests.
|
| > 4) Conventional productivity advice, which emphasizes
| efficiency, organization, and prioritization, falls short in
| addressing the challenge of having too many significant
| priorities.
|
| > 5) The proposed solution is to treat the to-read pile as a
| river, selectively choosing items to engage with while
| accepting the inherent impossibility of clearing the entire
| backlog, thus leading to a more liberating and realistic
| approach to information overload.
|
| The downside of doing the above is it's more generic and
| loses the punch of the prose. Always the main issue with
| skipping the reading to get to the meat. Obviously easier for
| non-fiction than fiction.
| petersellers wrote:
| I tried several times and it seemed to miss the point of
| the article every time.
| haswell wrote:
| I understand what you're trying to do with this comment, but
| arguably the river in this case is HN.
|
| The paragraph you mention is the tangible advice, but
| articulating the problem is in my mind even more important than
| the advice itself.
|
| Advice is just advice. Maybe it applies to you, maybe it
| doesn't. The problem is what remains. The problem if well
| articulated either validates the advice, or gives the reader
| information to process for themselves and from which personal
| insight can be reached.
|
| The advice without the problem is just some guy on the Internet
| telling you what to do, and that, to me, is rather
| uninteresting.
| uoaei wrote:
| I think many people are struggling with the same issues
| independently, all across society. This is equally true right
| now as it is in other times.
|
| Perhaps there are many who have identified the problem
| without settling on a satisfying solution. In these cases the
| context is already (painfully) familiar and the main insight
| will be the path forward out of their malaise.
|
| What you say is true for those who have never even grappled
| with the question, but I assume HN harbors folks who like to
| analyze inefficiencies in their lives, so I'd expect most of
| those here who already have reading lists to have contended
| with this problem and at least attempted to search for
| solutions in the past.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| They could have fit it all in the headline tbh but there'd be
| nothing to click past that.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Not sure about the analogy, but definitely appreciate the
| advice.
|
| Edit: I get now. '...a stream that flows past you, and from
| which you pluck a choice item...'
| Quixotica1 wrote:
| Thanks for the tip.
| gspencley wrote:
| > After all, you presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the
| unread books in the British Library
|
| This article was clearly NOT written for me :(
| candyman wrote:
| To give him credit I have to cite Dave Weiner who for me created
| the concept of of online information being a "river" which means
| you can watch it go by and not feel guilty about it. You pick out
| what you find interesting or important and let the rest go. I've
| never thought of "zero inbox" as something worth striving for.
| Just let it go...
| criddell wrote:
| I think the new AI tools are going to help me a great deal. There
| are books that I know I'm not going to read but I'd still like
| the Cliffs Notes distillation. I think an AI that understands my
| areas of interest could create personalized summaries of those
| books.
|
| I'm also looking forward to seeing if the new AIs work as better
| recommendation engines. Again, once the AI gets to know me, I'd
| love to be able to ask "I want to learn how to sew a messenger-
| type bag. Where do I start?" Hopefully I'd get back a list of
| books, videos, and local craftspeople. (And I actually do want to
| learn that...)
| luismmolina wrote:
| Already possible, this is my workflow:
|
| Submit you favorite books to ChatGPT, ask for 10 keywords that
| describe the book.
|
| Then ask for the keywords that repeat more than once and put
| those keywords into TheStoryGraph.
|
| With this workflow you avoid "hallucinated" books. And thanks
| to this the worst suggestions are 4/5 stars.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Have you tried https://www.blinkist.com/en
| jwr wrote:
| I did and haven't found it that useful after all. Turns out
| that after you subscribe, it's hard to find the motivation to
| get through many of those condensed versions.
| criddell wrote:
| No. Have you? Would you recommend it?
|
| I can't help but think their time is running out. AIs are
| going to be able to produce the book summary and maybe even
| generate the audio version of that too.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I have not, because I actually prefer to read the full
| book, even if my Tsundoku keeps growing. Another way that I
| look at it is that even if I compressed my unread books
| into summaries, I would then just get more and more
| summaries, ending up with the same problem.
|
| I recommended it to you because it sounds like you really
| want to read the books you have or are accumulating, so you
| might find it valuable, even if I don't.
| criddell wrote:
| I prefer to read the full book as well, I just know that
| there are certain books for which that will never happen.
| For example, I would love to have already read one of
| those 4" thick biographies of Winston Churchill but I
| have almost no desire to start reading one of them.
| edude03 wrote:
| I tried blinkist, I liked it in theory but I realized that I
| only listened to the summaries while busy with other things
| so I wasn't really absorbing the information.
| lumb63 wrote:
| That was an awful lot of words to say "read what you can".
|
| I used to worry about adding items to my "want to read" list
| faster than I could read them. I realized that this is preferable
| to the opposite - having nothing to read. As long as I'm alive
| and want to read, I'll be reading something. Having read all the
| books I want to is not my objective; enjoying reading books is.
| So, no need to worry about not having enough time to read all I
| want to.
|
| I now treat my list as a pre-filtered pool of books that span
| various topics. There is no prioritization associated with them.
| I find it best to read next whichever book seems most relevant to
| my interests at the time, which I can't anticipate in advance.
|
| The other day my girlfriend sent me an article about microscopic
| gears in the legs of an insect and so I decided to read a book
| off my list about intelligent design. My prior read was about
| cardiovascular disease because I read an article about
| cholesterol on the internet. The one prior to that was about
| gender disparities, simply because I felt like it fit my frame of
| mind at the time.
|
| There is no need to make the matter complicated: read what you
| want to read, when you want to read it.
| gopalv wrote:
| > an awful lot of words to say "read what you can".
|
| But it needs to be said and repeated, right?
|
| Because people feel time-poor when it comes to matching what
| they want to do against what they can do. Building up a backlog
| is probably the worst way to kill the fun there.
|
| And if everyone in that scenario feels like they are somewhat
| alone in that feeling where the "Books I wish I had time to
| read" turns into a prioritization exercise where you end up
| reading the "most important book" while thinking of a book you
| aren't.
|
| You and the OP are saying the same thing, but it is worth
| repeating.
|
| The longer you've been out of a structured learning environment
| like a school/college the more sense that makes because that is
| a constrained environment where optimization actually helps &
| the fun reading part isn't.
|
| As for me, my library holds list is a good way to have a "river
| of books" where I can dip out of it and let it pass through my
| bookshelf on a schedule whether I read it or not.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > That was an awful lot of words to say "read what you can".
|
| And yet you added even more with your comment :)
| Zetice wrote:
| Yeah, seems like the real problem is the desire to clear the
| backlog. You can have a bucket, just don't expect it to ever
| empty.
| bluGill wrote:
| My todo list is the same way. I expect to finish everything
| currently one it somewhere around my 3000th birthday. I just
| prioritize what needs to be done now, and then what I can do know
| that feels interesting at the moment. The rest I'll do latter
|
| Note that there is nothing on the list about expanding human
| lifespan. There are some things that get priority around exercise
| and eating good food, but that is as close as it gets.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup. Discovered this in hard data after I built by first
| ToDo/Task Managemtn application, then populated with current
| projects. I soon discovered that I had 768 hours of Critical
| and High importance items that needed to be completed in the
| next two weeks. For reference, there are only 168hrs*2=336
| hours in a fortnight.
|
| Not. Going. To. Happen.
|
| So, that list gets post-filtered in real time ...
|
| Seems to be the plague of the ambitious and/or conscientious --
| We should be happy that our reach exceeds our grasp
| greenspam wrote:
| Nice article. I just put it to my to-read list.
| throw0101b wrote:
| My local library has a limit of having 100 books on hold (which I
| hit during 2020 lockdowns when there were closed for a while). My
| current hold list is ~60, and the system allows you to put
| 'pause' a hold until a certain day so that they don't all arrive
| at once: so I have holds going out to July.
|
| By the system also has a "saved" books feature where it allows
| you to simply bookmark stuff of interest (and categorize/tag
| them) but not ask the library to deliver them. My saved list is
| ~1200. I don't expect to actually get to them, but I have options
| for my next item.
|
| (I long ago gave up buying books (except in very rare cases) just
| because I don't have space.)
| khalilravanna wrote:
| I had this problem but with videogames. What I ended up doing was
| making a giant spreadsheet in Airtable with every game I've ever
| played and ever want to play. I have a nice little "What To Play
| Next" grid of images that I'm constantly tinkering with the order
| of as my fancy gravitates towards one genre or another. E.g. If I
| finish a long JRPG I'll probably filter on games of a shorter
| length or a Shooter for a palette cleanse and move that higher up
| in the list.
|
| The important parts for me were:
|
| * Don't assume you'll play everything or stress about "missing"
| games
|
| * Easy visibility into what I'm currently playing, what I liked
| in the past, and what I've been thinking about playing next
|
| * Try not to play more than 2 games concurrently. Then I end up
| never finishing anything, I appreciate the games I play less, and
| then I have less fun playing games overall.
|
| Bonus points with this approach: Since I _always_ have something
| I 'm excited to play next, I'm never in a rush to buy games new.
| I actually save a fair amount of money because I'm almost always
| playing games a couple years old and on sale for 50%+ off.
|
| This approach has been so successful and enjoyable for me I even
| thought about spinning this off into a product online but figured
| my weird OCD approach maybe isn't that generally applicable to
| other. Plus you can just create your own Airtable tailored to
| your own needs.
|
| EDIT
|
| If anyone wants to make their own list and wants some data to
| start, here's ~1000 games to start with my data with some of the
| more personal columns pruned out:
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/guc3tjefoyeyfvr/Games-Library-2023...
|
| Most of the columns are self-explanatory. IGDB = is a games
| database run by Twitch (https://www.igdb.com/). I use the ID as
| basically a foreign key to their table and then I have scripts
| that query stuff in there like their critic's rating and release
| date programmatically.
|
| Also if anyone knows of any other public data sets of video games
| and video game metadata please let me know!
| ptato wrote:
| I've thought about setting up something like this before for
| myself. You might have given me the motivation I needed...
| amerkhalid wrote:
| I've got the same issue, particularly with PlayStation Plus,
| where there are countless games available at minimal cost.
|
| My previous strategy was to begin a game, that would be my main
| game, while sampling others on the side. If one of the side
| games caught my interest more, it would take the main game's
| place, and I might return to the original game later.
|
| This approach was low-pressure, but it often took me years to
| complete many games.
|
| I used to handle my side projects similarly, starting numerous
| projects but rarely bringing them to completion. Lately, I've
| been making an effort to stick with a side project long enough
| to at least show it to friends.
|
| Now, I'm pushing myself to stay committed to two games at a
| time. One game is from top of my list that I really want to
| play. The other is a shorter one. This way I can enjoy that
| satisfying feeling of accomplishment more frequently.
|
| I'd never considered making a spreadsheet for this, but now I'm
| intrigued by the idea!
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > I used to handle my side projects similarly, starting
| numerous projects but rarely bringing them to completion.
| Lately, I've been making an effort to stick with a side
| project long enough to at least show it to friends.
|
| I've been following the same approach, but also noticed that
| it's less effective at utilizing my excitement. Every project
| hits the point where sooner tedious work must be done and
| I've found myself sometimes stay away from it for a few weeks
| and not pick up something I'm excited about because I should
| really work on the tedious thing, so I work on neither.
| seaners wrote:
| I would like your wisdom (and Oliver's) but unfortunately I
| have added both to a Notion webclipper that I will not see for
| 2-3 years.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I also try not to play more than a handful of games at a time.
| The paradox of choice is real.
|
| I tend to play older games, and games I can pick up and play
| for five minutes at a time. Think Game Boy. A level here and a
| level there can feel like you've achieved way more than some
| longer, more grindy games.
|
| I keep a couple of lists of games.
|
| A massive "sounds interesting" list of games that I hear about
| along the way. I may never play some of them, but it sounded
| good at the time. Title and system is about all I put here. If
| I come back and don't remember what it was, it probably wasn't
| as interesting as I thought.
|
| The other is list with WIP, started, and finished games.
|
| If something slides into the started pile and I forget where I
| was, I just remove it. Life is too short to worry about things
| that are supposed to be fun.
| Arrath wrote:
| > I also try not to play more than a handful of games at a
| time. The paradox of choice is real.
|
| In general I'm like this, but I also have games that are
| exclusions to the rule that I pop back around to from time to
| time, like the save I have in Factorio that I come back to
| and tinker with now and then (I keep a text file around with
| my general to-do list so I don't spend an hour running around
| the base trying to remember what the hell I was doing, while
| marveling at various bits of kludged together spaghetti)
|
| As for books, I'm generally working through at least 3 at a
| time: One on audible, for commutes, one on my kindle, and one
| in print. I try to keep the kindle/print books varied so I
| switch between whichever strikes my fancy at the moment.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Yeah I compartmentalize exceptions like these as well. Like
| I don't count "ongoing coop games with friends" or "long
| term games" (like your Factorio save, or something like
| League of Legends) towards my broader "What I'm currently
| playing" count.
| [deleted]
| hyperthesis wrote:
| A strength of a product, particularly where emotion and
| motivation are concerned, is guidance and encouragement -
| making it easy to do. Even if you "could" do it without help.
|
| Most people aren't autodidacts... even elite atheletes have
| coaches.
| hyperific wrote:
| It hasn't been updated in a while but I have used this games
| list before. (https://github.com/Elbriga14/EveryVideoGameEver)
| IGDB sounds incredible though, thanks for sharing. I'm curious
| if you use How Long to Beat to get the completion time. I've
| used completion time to produce some helpful metrics.
| cjsawyer wrote:
| I made a drastic improvement in my mindset with regards to
| media backlogs when I realized that they they exist to
| entertain me and that my whims are the only thing that matters.
| I don't owe that pile of books anything. Now they're not
| allowed to generate stress, only entertainment!
| pongo1231 wrote:
| I think people feel forced to get the value they put in back
| out of every single one of them asap as to not feel like they
| wasted their money which is what is causing that stress to
| begin with, even though there really isn't any reason for
| that urge if you look at it. The backlog is going to be there
| practically forever, just waiting - granted it's not tied to
| a service which might shut down at any moment.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's why libraries (or, shall we say, digital libraries)
| are great, I don't have to worry about running out of media
| or feel like I need to get value from them.
| vuciv1 wrote:
| One way I've been managing this is by reading summaries of
| certain books. While it can be difficult to decide which books
| deserve a full read, this approach has significantly reduced the
| stress I feel about my ever-growing "to-read" pile. By focusing
| on the most important ideas and insights, I can still learn and
| grow without feeling the pressure to read every single book on my
| list.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > reading summaries of certain books
|
| Careful with this. You have to trust that the summary is
| correct. Which, as it turns out, isn't as foolproof as one
| might hope for.
|
| It turns out that a sizeable percentage of human reviewers and
| condensers of information just make stuff up. And if you're
| just consuming the summary of a work, how would you know?
| [deleted]
| CrypticShift wrote:
| I think LLMs could definitely help us stop treating large piles
| as "lists" (to be completed). You can just "dialogue" with it
| through Chat. And if the AI has access to your recent activities
| or notes, it can even give you relevant choices. Or you can
| "navigate" through it in an interactive 2D/3D map that clusters
| the article/books by (semantic) similarity.
|
| So dialogue and navigation take the place of checking a list.
| mlyle wrote:
| Though... It just deepens the problems of curation of all the
| content everyone consumes through relatively opaque and
| unpredictable means.
| CrypticShift wrote:
| Yes, more opaque and unpredictable for sure, but I don't
| think it deepens the problems of curation. I believe it is
| solution. : you trade predictability/transparency for smarter
| /non-linear curation. You can always choose.
| mlyle wrote:
| I just worry about the biases in models becoming our
| biases, and self-perpetuating.
| avg_dev wrote:
| Never heard of this person before but was pleasantly surprised by
| the content.
|
| In my own life, I have spent decades plagued by the feeling that
| I wasn't doing enough, and I had many varied areas of focus and
| felt like I didn't really progress on anything. That in itself
| (the feeling of lack of progress) was I think kind of misleading,
| as I did progress on some things (though I clearly regressed on
| some things as well).
|
| I don't really know how it happened but I have made some
| significant shifts in my life. I started to become physically
| active again, I stopped smoking cigarettes and some other
| unhealthy habits, I started really developing and digging into
| some of my active and creative passions like writing, playing a
| musical instrument, and renewing my focus on coding to an end and
| with purpose and quality in mind.
|
| Somehow I started finding that I had much more energy and time
| available for everything. And as opportunities arose I began to
| seize them. It was a very exciting period for me. Eventually, my
| plate really became too full, and things began to suffer (mostly
| me) and I started to say no to things, and continue to keep my
| focus on what I really think is important. I feel that it has
| taught me about the interconnected nature of my life, and about
| how to value my time, how to slow down and appreciate something,
| how to deal with my emotions head on instead of taking years or
| decades to process events in my life (I am sure there have and
| will be many exceptions to what I have said), how to actively
| take stock of my current situation and change my plans as needed,
| how to deal with the fact that my expectations for things very
| rarely match up with reality, how to stop being an intellectual
| purist and idealist while still deeply valuing a good idea and
| pursuing my ideals. I look back at how much I have accomplished
| the last year and I can't help thinking everything came from
| stopping trying to do everything and accomplishing nothing (or so
| it felt), and by embracing what really mattered to me when it was
| in front of me. I learned to float down the river, I guess.
| Lazily most of the time. But when I feel it is necessary, I can
| exert more power in changing my trajectory than ever I could
| before.
| nell wrote:
| His books are enjoyable, I'd recommend his most recent one
| "Four thousand weeks" and the previous one "The Antidote" as
| well. Especially if you're overwhelmed or gets hit with anxiety
| often.
| Nezteb wrote:
| I came here to say this. The Antidote was the last "self-
| help" book I needed, personally.
| shever73 wrote:
| I agree with the concept, but I tend to view my to-read pile more
| like a sushi conveyor than a river. Assuming I'm still interested
| later in what I have to read, then it can come round again.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I have too many good books queued for never-reading-before-i-die,
| but it makes me feel good, and feel phony knowledgeable.
| pps wrote:
| There is this concept of antilibrary
| https://nesslabs.com/antilibrary
| sakisv wrote:
| The lede is buried near the end:
|
| > To return to information overload: this means treating your "to
| read" pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from
| which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a
| bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you
| presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the
| British Library - and not because there aren't an overwhelming
| number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it
| might be your job to get through them all.
|
| I find the analogy with the British library spot on, and very
| liberating.
| t344344 wrote:
| I found most books are just garbage. Take Moby-Dick for example,
| interesting story that could be compressed to two pages, but it
| is 400 pages of boring stuff, that goes on and on. And it can not
| be criticized as it is "fundamental corner stone of American
| literature"!
|
| Watching documentary about original story, and a few pieces about
| 19 century whale hunting, is much better use of time!
| bueno wrote:
| I'm the developer of an iOS and iPadOS app that I think is
| relevant here. My app Ephemera is a simple read-later application
| that places expiration dates on every link you add. If you don't
| read the article in time, it disappears forever.
|
| The app isn't for everyone, but if you are buried under the
| torrent of information you "think" you should read, I have found
| that Ephemera helps me focus and actually read more.
|
| You can find the app here: https://deadpan.io/ephemera/
|
| I'd love for Hacker News to check it out!
| FireInsight wrote:
| Something I stored disappearing feels like a stressful concept
| to me, but maybe it works for some.
| eitland wrote:
| Clearly. Some people enjoy Snapchat even if I find it to be
| about as useful - and a lot less entertaining - as Twitter.
| brewdad wrote:
| As you probably guessed, Snapchat doesn't really get
| deleted. I sat as a juror on a case where some of the most
| damning evidence was a Snapchat the police obtained from
| the company following an armed robbery and car theft. Some
| people are really poor at planning and covering their
| tracks.
| derekisnt wrote:
| Looks sick Tim, great idea and great execution!
| password1 wrote:
| Is there a way to have unread items go in an archive instead of
| disappearing? Sometimes I find insightful to re-look at the
| titles of things I've saved, even if I don't read them. It
| brings me back the why I saved it and it always unlocks some
| thought.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I'd love something similar with more general aspect, just TODO
| list with different priorities, expiration etc. Whether the
| content is URL, name of the book or grocery list are just
| implementation details.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| I actually solved this without an app. I realized I had around
| 10k "read later" items in my bookmarks folder in Chrome, and I
| simply deleted all of them.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| I do this semi-periodically now. At the end of the week I
| close all tabs, I archive everything in my inbox, mark all
| items in my slack as read ...
| eganist wrote:
| In fairness, I think the allure of an app is to act as a
| forcing function for actually reading the content before it
| disappears.
| JenrHywy wrote:
| I solved this by forcing myself to read my list in
| chronological order. After a small period it became very
| obvious that most stuff I'd put in my list truly did not
| matter.
| rcme wrote:
| Yes. Most information is truly worthless.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I think it's more that you always have a bunch of other
| things competing for your attention on the internet so
| there's no incentive to read things you once wanted to
| read.
|
| Even an article you just opened in a tab competes with
| scavenging for more info on HN/Reddit/Twitter. I don't
| think that's evidence that the articles are just worthless.
|
| Once, when the internet was out for a few days, I realized
| that iOS saves your reading list items for offline reading
| and I was glad to have it. All sorts of interesting
| articles that I curated. I now work through the reading
| queue on flights.
| artursapek wrote:
| This is the kind of black pill I come to Hacker News for
| fruit2020 wrote:
| Not worthless, but too much. Life is short, you need focus
| samstave wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/NCOBsKv.png
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is a super dope idea! Installing now
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Awesome! I do this with my YouTube Watch Later playlist and it
| really works. I'll get a couple hundred videos I "definitely
| want to watch, but not now" and my script will clear them out
| after X time. Never once have I missed something it's deleted.
| I don't even know _what_ it's deleted, because if it stood out
| enough to remember the name and search it up again I'll
| probably just watch it. Very few things do.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Got the app, couple notes so far:
|
| * Somehow, App Store SEO can't find it with "ephemera".
| "ephemera deadpan" found it though
|
| * For me, personally, bookmarking is usually done on the
| computer and read elsewhere. Phone-only is restrictive
|
| * Not a fan of paid unlock for basic features (setting
| expiration dates, accessing my own history (?!?)). I almost
| understand notifications if server costs are involved, like
| Apollo, but. While I understand devs gotta make a buck and
| this is both popular and well within your rights, I am not a
| fan of this trend
| hodgesd wrote:
| Do you mind sharing your Watch Later script?
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Sure! It's utter garbage but you're welcome to it. I keep
| it in a notes file and paste it into the console to run it.
|
| It sorts by `Date Added (newest)` and truncates the list to
| the 150 most recent videos. It also removes anything I've
| watched more than ~80% of. (Because the built-in button
| removes videos if you've watched _any_ percent, incl long
| ones you haven't finished yet)
|
| Script here: https://pastebin.com/Sfh6a0w1
| crashmat wrote:
| sounds cool, but I'd much rather be able to set it to, say, 3
| months rather than a max of 30 days.
| bueno wrote:
| Understandable! I haven't got tons of feedback thus far. I'll
| definitely consider bumping these values up.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Nice idea. I use Readwise in the river/shortlist mode and have
| a similar filter (not in shortlist, saved > x days ago), but I
| have to manually clear it out.
| screamingninja wrote:
| Love the idea. I use Signal's Note to Self feature with a 4
| week timer. Anything that warrants an extension gets readded to
| the queue. A dedicated app with a custom expiration / reminders
| / notifications / cross-device syncing would be phenomenal!
| Bootvis wrote:
| This is pretty cool idea! I like the simplicity of the app.
| sva_ wrote:
| Interesting. Bookmarked, might look at it later.
| par wrote:
| I had read some books on kindle here and there over the years,but
| recently switched over to full time on the kindle. And I must
| say, there is a distinct pleasure in carrying multiple books with
| me, and switching between them at will. I have been trying to
| replace bouncing around apps on my phone with bouncing around
| books on my kindle and it's been very enjoyable. Reduces pressure
| to finish any single book, and a lot more freedom to bounce
| around!
| karaterobot wrote:
| I have an English Lit degree, and the following advice from a
| professor almost made it worthwhile: "if you're reading for
| pleasure, and it's not pleasurable, put the book down. Give the
| author 50 pages, and if they haven't made it worth your time,
| move on to the next book."
|
| I share this advice with everybody, but almost nobody takes it as
| far as I know. There's way too much guilt and shame surrounding
| reading: "if I pick it up, _by GOD I will finish it, even if it
| takes a year and I hate every second of it_ ". It shouldn't be
| that way.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I did this with Snow Crash.
|
| I'm not a literature expert and I know people generally like
| the book. But I got maybe half way through the book and was
| wondering, "okay so when is the plot going to advance? Is there
| even a plot? Just feels like stuff is happening but I'm not
| sure why I should care."
|
| I spent too long thinking that it must be a good book so maybe
| I just have to give it a few more chapters.
| m463 wrote:
| Took me into middle age to do this.
|
| Now I don't feel guilty about:
|
| - books I don't finish
|
| - movies or tv series I don't finish
|
| - projects I don't make into a company
|
| and it doesn't matter if I bought into it hard. If I bought the
| "tv series complete collection", or whatever:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
| vlunkr wrote:
| I wonder where this guilt comes from. It seems highly
| illogical, yet very common. I've had to learn to ignore it with
| books and video games.
| XCSme wrote:
| For me, it's somewhat about thinking "I am not good at
| finishing things". I want to be someone who "gets things
| done", when I should actually strive to be someone who
| "quickly lets go of what is not worth spending time on".
| candyman wrote:
| It's good advice for multiple reasons. I put books down using
| this rule for many years. Sometimes I pick it up again and
| absolutely love it but I'm at a different point in my life and
| intellectual interests. It's kind of like mushrooms - when I
| was a kid I hated them, now I want them on everything.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Absolutely. "I must finish everything on my plate" mentality is
| unnecessary masochism. I recall plowing through ~2/3 of "Guns,
| Germs, and Steel" and then losing interest. I picked up "In the
| Realm of Hungry Ghosts" today to be my new bathroom reader.
| randomluck040 wrote:
| Sunk cost fallacy is playing its part as well I think. I can't
| bring myself to read anything I don't like anymore. I'm a slow
| reader so working through a book takes its time and I want to
| get the best possible experience out of it. Won't happen if I
| don't like the book. It's not only valid for books but
| everything else: series, movies, video games. If it doesn't
| work, why push it?
| Moissanite wrote:
| Some of it also comes from prior impressions that a book is
| "worth reading". Take Wealth of Nations as an example. It
| inspired, arguably, the whole field of economics - and yet
| after a hundred or so pages of reading about the worth of the
| labour of a man in Glasgow as compared to the labour of a man
| in London, I just wanted someone to end my misery.
|
| Alas, I'm afflicted by the "must finish" disease, so I paused
| reading and keep telling myself I'll get back to it.
| JenrHywy wrote:
| In general this is good advice, but needs a heuristic of when
| to apply it. It's a bit like albums: some are hard to get into
| but worth the effort in the end.
|
| So while there are plenty of books I won't finish, I tend to
| stick with things if:
|
| a) I've worked my way through a previous book by the author and
| it was worthwhile b) People whose opinions I trust say it's
| hard but worthwhile
| joatmon-snoo wrote:
| I made it through eight books of Wheel of Time before I finally
| stopped reading the series.
|
| ... I don't know how I made it to #8.
| allenu wrote:
| This is good advice. Similarly, if you're reading a book for
| the information, and you find it's way too wordy, there's no
| shame in just skimming it.
|
| I used to feel like it was my duty to read every word written
| by an author if I was serious about reading, even for self-help
| or pop-psych books. Over time, I realized that there's really a
| lot of bad writing out there, but there's still good nuggets of
| info if you look. The trick is to just recognize when a book is
| just padding itself out and just skim through the boring bits.
| No shame in that. And honestly, so many self-help or
| productivity books are just padded out to justify selling a
| book.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I tried to read Infinite Jest, and it just pissed me off. It
| was such an annoying text to try and read. I think I read at
| most 10 pages.
|
| Likewise, I have "rage quit" reading other books in the past as
| well.
|
| It's solid advice. Don't waste time reading something you are
| not enjoying. Same goes for movies.
| [deleted]
| a_c wrote:
| So is your product backlog. Most of them doesn't matter. Throw
| them away and rethink what matter most at the very moment.
|
| It is hard to do if you are continuously "sprinting". Or it
| doesn't matter if you outsourced the thinking of "what matters"
| to someone else.
| jyscao wrote:
| I think most people end up doing what he's suggesting anyway, out
| of necessity. I suppose his key insight is to just stop feeling
| guilty about not being able to get through it all.
| npunt wrote:
| I organize my Obsidian around this concept, separating out
| different streams for different domains of content I'm interested
| in. Social, AI, Antilibrary, Wisdom, generic Inbox, and my own
| Passing Thoughts and Story Prompts.
|
| I treat each of these streams as an input to growing my
| understanding & thinking in these domains, much like a stream of
| water nourishes plants around it. It's a big unlock to do things
| this way, because it treats inputs as opportunities not tasks.
| Different streams flow at different rates based on where my
| initial interests lie and based on interesting things happening
| in the world.
|
| Sort of biomimicry in action in the intellectual realm
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| I've been using Google Keep mostly, but tried Obsidian for a
| bit. Is it worth the transition?
| labrador wrote:
| Something that helped me was to develop my "discernment" of
| "quality" so I could quickly reject material that appeared
| interesting but actually was of little use to me. This is going
| to be different for each person, but I think it's worth putting
| some thought into because I had previously assumed I had
| developed a natural talent for it when actually I was consuming
| content out of habit.
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