alt.hn

4/1/2025 at 8:33:50 AM

When so much knowledge is produced every day, how do you keep up?

by frabia

4/1/2025 at 11:16:18 AM

1. Treat it as a stream - you can't catch all of it as there is so much info, just catch something interesting, read it, and don't stress out if you didn't catch something else. There will always be something else to read.

2. Most of the sources you've mentioned are push-based - i.e. someone else is pushing this new info onto you (newsletters, youtube, podcasts, news). This increases FOMO. Instead, try to implement a pull-based approach and only seek and read info that is relevant to what you want to learn, read. It's a lot harder than it seems, but my guess it's harder due to default.

Last year, I re-tried[1] the experiment of not using the internet for entertainment for a few months, only for work and life admin. To catch up with news, I subscribed to a paper-based weekly newspaper. If there is something important in the world, you will find out about it, someone will tell you. But this will help a ton with anxiety and mental health.

The other thing I realised - when I listen to podcast and go into info overload, I get burned out a lot quicker. Listening to podcasts while working is the worst. I removed all podcast subscriptions and only started adding those that I want to listen + limit when I listen to these episodes.

[1] https://oleggera.com/blog/life-with-no-internet/

by gerlv

4/1/2025 at 9:44:34 AM

Accept it. Let it go. The useful stuff will bubble up over time anyway. A useful concept will be useful months later too. Unless you're fighting for survival in the research around the latest tech (like actually ai research, not playing with APIs), you can likely ignore the day to day things. And I'm saying that as someone who enjoys learning the day to day things.

by viraptor

4/1/2025 at 5:31:01 PM

Here's my secret: be the spreader of current events to your coworkers. If you do this enough, they'll mimic you and do the same. Now you have an army of web-crawlers reporting back to you and all you need to do is process that information and decide what's important.

The only way I found out about a website I've come to use pretty much daily because it proved itself very useful to my job is though this method.

by raccoonhands

4/1/2025 at 5:31:49 PM

Why do you feel like you need to keep it up ? The foundation of computing hasn't really changed too much in the last 20 years. Master the foundations and maybe read this site once a week ?

by aprdm

4/2/2025 at 8:35:07 PM

If you didn't do any of this, you would be just fine, happy even.

This is entertainment. You can enjoy a random movie without watching the IMDB top 100 first. You can live without a deep understanding of the Afghan wars. You don't need to have an opinion on the latest AI trend.

My reading list is a wishlist. When I have time, I pick something interesting from it. I don't feel any obligation to finish it, or even to keep it from growing. It's an act of curation, not aggregation.

by nicbou

4/1/2025 at 7:22:51 PM

Just like no single person could ever find the time to watch every movie or TV show released (let alone all the video on YouTube); you can't possibly 'keep up' by reading everything.

When I am in learning mode, I try to mix up a 'breadth first' approach with an occasional 'depth first' method.

Pick up enough tidbits of information about a few popular topics so you can have a half-way intelligent conversation about them. Dive into detail on just a few of them so you know more than the average person about those.

Don't worry that you can't do either of these approaches for every single topic possible.

by didgetmaster

4/1/2025 at 5:04:06 PM

Several level of reading and bookmarking. I don't need to consume everything. Sometimes I just store a reference to the content in case I need it. Sometimes, I do a quick overview. I only give my full attention to a few thing.

Another practical tip is strengthening up you foundations. If you're interested in programming languages, once you learned the theory behind them, you'll find it's faster to learn new ones. Textbooks are great for this. This day, I don't care about most content, as there are few that are more than a sliver of insight.

by skydhash

4/1/2025 at 2:44:50 PM

That's mostly noise. I just ignore. Except on some specific subject I'm eventually dealing with, I check "top of last 90 days" and I'm fine.

by rogerthis

4/1/2025 at 10:59:23 AM

You can't keep up. You learn things when you need to.

by chistev

4/1/2025 at 1:26:15 PM

[dead]

by general_reveal

4/2/2025 at 2:48:54 AM

What do you want to achieve (in life, today, this week, next years)? Answer that and you know what to focus on. The rest will be ignored naturally.

by gtirloni

4/1/2025 at 12:34:58 PM

Not _knowledge_ but rather information is produced every day.

You keep up like you and your brain always do - by focusing and prioritizing.

Your captain obvious)

by aristofun

4/1/2025 at 9:38:15 AM

[dead]

by SegFault_42