How not to drown in the ocean of information?

Question

Books

There is such a situation that I constantly have about 20-30 tabs open in the browser with various articles and information resources, poisoning articles in a pocket or evernot is tantamount to sending an article to the trash, since I most likely will not read it, but will bury it with a hundred others . As among such a variety of information, news, technology, etc. not to go crazy, learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, correctly find, process and assimilate information, filter it and get rid of the obsessive feeling of loss of control, if you forgot a couple of days, surf the same articles on habré? What are your principles for working with information? Can limit the amount of resources? Strictly limit the range of interests? Leave the theme until you need to apply it? Or make it a rule not to add more than 20 articles to a packet? It is interesting to hear your experience and cases.

Answer 1

0. On Habré, the world has not closed in the same way as on VKontakte)
1. When you “stumbled upon” interesting information during a “working” search (when you are doing work on a current project), put the article (+ link) in a folder next to the project, in relation to which you came across it or starting from the topic of the article (next to another project).
2. By thematically narrowly focused ("beam") search - you will find no more than 5 articles. These are primary sources and educational (examples, performance, etc.) All others are "hellish trash" and plagiarism.
3. Do not look for "nothing to do": spend time - 0 sense.
4. Use the full power of the Google search bar (priority control symbols, etc.) to filter out "garbage" links.
5. For any topic of discussion - there is only 1 leading resource that is quoted all over the Internet. An interesting topic - become a member of such a community and receive notifications by mail.
6. First plan the target, then go "to the forest for mushrooms" for information. If on the contrary - everything ...: you will be "sucked" by the black hole of technology and you will read FOREVER!!!
7. The main rule: the article should be read immediately or "attached" to your goal and sent to a folder (see paragraph 1)
And remember:
a toaster is for
Google to relax - for work
UPD: How to search for information correctly

Answer 2

I either read right away or never. If I think to postpone the article for later, then I don’t need it, because. I won't read this either.
I can suggest collecting articles during the day, taking 30-60 minutes to read in the evening. there you will already figure out what is worth reading from the deferred and what is not

Answer 3

I act much more simply - I absorb new information only when solving specific problems. No scheduled tasks - no new information. And no porridge in my head

Answer 4

1. I have been using mindmaps (FreeMind, XMind, Mindjet) for organization and systematization for a long time - with the skill, it allows you to sort and structure a huge amount of information. Reading documentation and technical literature at the same time as making a mindmap is very helpful.
2. after I realized that I was emotionally attached to Habr/LOR/VKontakte in search of news, I installed TT-RSS on a local server and dragged all sources of information there - after a while, my attention was freed, tk. the mass of purely emotional / marketing / political rubbish that usually accompanies useful information during a "head-on" search has disappeared. There are also ready-made solutions, such as Feedly, etc.
3. after I got tired of doing endless TODOs anywhere, I installed Redmine on a local server - even for non-IT projects. There is also Trac.
4. when I realized that, in all browsers, the number of bookmarks goes off scale, with the complete impossibility of finding the necessary information, I installed SemanticScuttle on a local server (there are still ready-made GoogleBookmarks, Evernote, etc.) and thought through the tags, and after sorting out the bookmarks, it appeared the habit of a minute to think about the tags and put the bookmark in its place right away.

Answer 5

The brain and gastrointestinal tract are very similar in functionality.
Maya Plesetskaya was once asked "How do you manage to maintain such a figure, do you have a special diet?", To which she replied: "The diet is simple - do not eat."
"Don't eat like that, I bite" Khokhlyatskaya proverb.
Understand that everything that you hawala in reserve is deposited with fats and slags. When you want to eat, you open the refrigerator and take what you need at the moment and as much as you can eat. Trying to eat a lot will not lead to anything good.
Principles: diet, separate meals, fasting day, fish day, weekends.

Answer 6

As a preventive measure, I would declare an information hunger strike for a week or two, focusing on pressing matters. Maybe not the most successful way - "to rush from one extreme to another, to find the golden mean", but a working one :)
During this time, you can retrospectively review what you have read previously, in terms of what is left in your memory, and what is useful in the memory on practice.
It may turn out that the desire to stuff information into oneself is a matter of habit. Not because it is really necessary (useful), but because you just like it. On the one hand, this is not scary, but on the other hand, it can be like overeating when you shove more information into yourself than you can digest. And this is somehow not very good, and then it would be good to introduce an informational diet and hygiene of the mind)
And if you don’t find anything like that in yourself, at least there will be considerations of what is really valuable from this and what is not very.

Answer 7

It helps to separate the processes of accumulation and sorting.
For accumulation, I use a shared folder in the browser bookmarks, where I indiscriminately throw everything that seemed interesting / useful during the week.
On the weekends, I spend an hour sorting, going over all the saved materials. If the material is important, it is sent to storage. If not, then I re-view it so that it can be found in the search engine on demand if necessary, and delete it.
In storage:
1. If the material is related to some important topic, then this topic is in Evernote, and it goes there.
2. If the material is of a general nature, not directly related to my activity, then it is sent to the folder of the corresponding topic in the "Themes" section of the browser tabs.
I create a file in the folder with the project, where I upload links to materials relevant to the project, I give them brief descriptions. In the course of work, the number of links grows, it becomes possible to group them, I give the groups headings.
After the work on the projects is completed, I distribute these links by topic in Evernote.

Answer 8

1. Learn the basic methods of expanding consciousness:
1.1. Suppression of the verbal system when the mouth is closed. Do not forget that the main advantage of using it is to stop, think about why and how it helps to become smarter and survive, and then throw it out). You need to do this all the time, and not when you want or the end of the universe has come.
1.2. Wider eyes, reduce vision fragmentation, the most stable source of data. Along the way, the transfer of data processing from the subconscious to consciousness, i.e. more brains work usefully. You can use abbreviation. Speed ​​reading does not work because 1.1 and 1.3 are not observed throughout life, different systems are used, figurative and verbal.
1.3. Generate associations of everything you see
2. Learn physics and efficiency:
2.1. SRT and the main conclusions about the movement of particles or what we call particles, although we don’t really know what it is.
2.2. Gödel's theorem on the impossibility of complete physical self-knowledge, using myself
2.3. Russian language, to understand that you cannot write the same word the same way with infinite probability. Draw a conclusion why most likely no one understands anyone and why it works (effectively?).
3. Become a patriot)) effectively)
4. Think about why the development of science is slowing down, and the flow of information is getting bigger.
And then start applying efficiency) everything will fly, maybe the inserts in the furnace will fly away.
Of course, this is just speculation)) but nothing new

Answer 9

Interested in everything means not interested in anything!
Choose one direction that you are really interested in and develop.
Usually surfing involves reading the news, or searching for answers (Social networks are not taken into account because I am not there).
Check out the news for the day. Closed page!
Found the answer. Closed page!
Found, but not that, but it can come in handy - they closed the page!
Productivity will increase - the fact.
If you want to send an article to a poket or evernot, close it)
It is impossible to embrace the immensity. You can spend your whole life reading someone else's text. And you can’t learn anything (
And for habr there is a handy thing:
Speed ​​reading has nothing to do with ... IMHO. Usually from the title and the first paragraph it is clear what it is about and whether you need it. And to understand in detail you need to read slowly and more than once.

Answer 10

20-30 open tabs is completely unnecessary. But since you haven’t felt it yet, then continue on, at some point you will move to a new level and act differently. When solving specific problems for a long time, you are in the subject, so you filter the necessary articles very quickly and get information from them. And you also remember very quickly what you need, because you are already in the subject and you do not need much effort to associate new information with the one in your head.
But it will come to you later, while you just realized that - something is wrong.
Articles are actually useful to read from the end, because there is a conclusion from the article. Interesting first comments. Especially comments that get a lot of upvotes.
It is very useful at the end of the working day to close all links related to work. I myself have not yet reached such a level either :)
What I want to leave I throw off in Evernote. But I also know very advanced people who maintain simple text lists of links to cool articles on topics. Having received such a selection, you can quickly enter the topic.
Look online for a book: Georgy Getsov "How to work effectively with information from books, newspapers ...". The book is old, but it lays down some fundamental things.
In fact, most of the information on the network duplicates each other. And just the necessary information is not so much.

Answer 11

The answer is simple, the answer lies in human psychology and physiology.
any person cannot keep 7-10 elements in his head at the same time.
Well, it is in most cases.
there are individuals, exceptions, who can do more.
but these are the exceptions, not the rule.
in order not to drown in the oceans of information, you need to learn to set goals for yourself, a goal (what do you want to do now, what to read, what are you looking for, what do you want to find, what question). after the goals, learn to structure information, determine its importance. here you need to think analytically. well, in order not to drown in these oceans, you need to pull out the most necessary as a result of all analyzes and samples, in an amount of no more than 10 elements (pages, articles, tabs, if it’s more convenient for you). if there are more, then by importance, put aside some for now, and some for later. all. and always do it. get used to this system. thus you will not deceive human nature, but only accustom yourself to correct assimilation.
and of course, in the process, maybe you will be pumped up to an increase in the elements at the same time, but do not go too far

Answer 12

I use the delayed reading service Pocket and the extension for browsers.
Then I read in a calm atmosphere in the evening on a tablet or phone and decide what to do with this information:
Regarding news resources, tweeters, RSS, I try to maintain a healthy minimalism:

• I am not subscribed to news resources, there is nothing but negative
• the number of RSS subscriptions is limited, mostly I read author's resources 1-2 articles per week
• There are only living people on Twitter, VK, Mordoknig, with blocking of reposts, retweets and other spam

Answer 13

Evernote seems to have a limit on the amount of saved information per month, therefore, personally, I only send articles that are really important for reading there. And to solve the problem of reading all this goodness, I bought myself an iPad mini specially without 3G, so that on the way home I can safely read all this goodness. Offline reading is quite focused and without the desire to follow links. In such a situation, there is already a war with what to read: one of the hundreds of books there on the iPad or articles in evernote, and you can also watch one of the courses from lynda.com or tutsplus, but that's another story :)
PS Generally speaking, in our age of widespread availability of information, we can only dream of peace. Sometimes I even envy people in North Korea, for them the information space is completely different, not like for us ...

Answer 14

The most necessary, but boring at the beginning, and tabloid at the end. Even prioritization of sources, not only opened in order of importance of links.
I use rss and feed search, also with twitter, also with feed search.
The third is speed reading training. The result of this is a preliminary acquaintance with the article, the selection of the main one (takes 1-10 seconds).
This is all a matter of self-discipline, and if you asked yourself this question, then you are on the right track.

Answer 15

Usually, when something is very interesting , I read it right away. Everything else is secondary (this category may also include something useful for me personally) I add to the reading list (no more than 5 articles, usually). The third category is news and informational noise. I try to spend as little time as possible on this, you can quickly see the picture of the day on Twitter.
Bottom line , break all your interests into groups and prioritize reading (which is more important to you personally).

Answer 16

Prioritized important resources
For example
1. Important: Habrahabr, Community framework or PL that I use
2. Minor: Gikatimes, Megamind, News, etc.
Scattered in feedly their rss in two sections.
On the tablet, I scroll through the Important. And if the announcement is interesting, I add it to Pocket in two taps. If very interesting I read at once.
I scroll through the Secondary and there is already little that I add to Pocket.
Then, in a calm atmosphere and when there is no longer the main work, I read the filtered one.

Answer 17

I’ll immediately add on my own that the Pearltrees application is great for cataloging knowledge, reading Feedly - for the most part, nothing else is needed. Although it is necessary, but this is already the idea of ​​a separate project, which, as you understand, should lie at the intersection of these two products.
I had exactly the same problem (and still have it)
To begin with, you should ask yourself the question: Why? What is your goal by absorbing tons of information? It has been correctly noted by many that with an increase in the speed of information consumption, the quality decreases, because your surfing simply develops into reading, nothing lingers for a long time and you will not return to anything.
Of course, I'm interested in a lot, but to narrow the area, I filter the depth of immersion in information. That is, I remember the resources on which there is not just information on some topic, but the best one. By indexing articles, I only delve into those that match my current task priorities. The rest, as it were, is simply wound on a mustache. and the very fact that it is possible is remembered.

Answer 18

In my opinion, it is necessary to prioritize and systematize the collected information according to them. Thus, there will be a certain harmony between the amount of information and the time spent on reading / studying it. Otherwise, it may turn out, as mentioned earlier, that you can stupidly acquire unnecessary informational fat. For example, I did not manage to productively deal with something with such an amount of information as you describe.