8 ms·

There's a whole slew of content being created in all forms, from newsletters, blog posts, books, podcasts, music, video games, video on demand and live video. A

by mevile 8y ago

There's a whole slew of content being created in all forms, from newsletters, blog posts, books, podcasts, music, video games, video on demand and live video. A lot of it is actually really high-quality content. We're being inundated with too much good stuff. I see all these newsletters in my inbox I don't have time to read that I want to. Tv shows, youtube videos I want to watch but don't have time for. I'm listening to a podcast when I cook while I have a game on and a book in my bag. It's like a really good problem to have tbh, but there's a problem with managing this. This week there was a post about how to pick a good non-fiction book. Figuring out what the best content for me for the time I have is the problem. It's a problem we all have right now. Also that was a really well written post, a love letter to newsletters. I really enjoyed it.

trevyn 8y ago
>Figuring out what the best content for me for the time I have is the problem. And, of course, sometimes the best choice is no content at all. I do wonder how increasing quantity and quality of content will effect markets and create new opportunities. Maybe Ev Williams is right and it’s about curation. Maybe something deeper.
- bookofjoe 8y ago
  "The best response is no response."—Dr. Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics"(1960)
nefitty 8y ago
It gets frustrating to feel like every moment another decision needs to be made. Driving to the store: what will I listen to? Free time: video games, tv, reading or what? At work: music or podcasts or radio as background noise? I am not sure if decision fatigue is real, but working from that assumption, too much of my energy is used up on ultimately inconsequential things like this...
- pathseeker 8y ago
  >I am not sure if decision fatigue is real, but working from that assumption, too much of my energy is used up on ultimately inconsequential things like this... I think it is and have largely given up on trying to plan entertainment for trivial things like driving to the store. I either just sit in silence and enjoy it or let someone else in the car pick radio if they want it.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Automate your decision making progress. The same music, the same food, the same routine. Problem solved.
B-Con 8y ago
I have so many queues of stuff I want to get to. I feel guilty how little of it I consume. Sometimes just looking at my backlog is somewhat anxiety inducing. I have 245 videos in my YouTube "Watch Later" queue. (Turns out some parts of the Android YT UI has a max of 199 videos.) And a lot of those are 30min+ lectures. I probably have at least 50hrs of content queued on YT alone. And that's what I haven't watched. Sometimes I can't choose when I do have the time. I'll have the time to consume 1-3 hours of content and I'll freeze, unable to choose. And half the time I choose something new that's not on my list yet.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Do what I do: just clear out your backlogs once in a while. Be heavy-handed and learn to ignore your Fear Of Missing Out. They're not like your Jira backlog that someone requires and expects you to work through in its entirety. They're just lists of things that are "interesting, but not interesting enough to watch/listen to/read right now". So clear them out, I bet you've had some stuff on there for over a year. I know you probably feel some attachment to them, but try clearing out one of the backlogs and see how you feel about it. I learned this when I accidentally nuked my backlog of open tabs in Firefox, which had lots of things I wanted to get around to checking out in depth. I discovered that I didn't really miss most of them, and the few I did miss, I could find again from memory.
  - B-Con 8y ago
    Yes, for sure. I have done this before, but I'm long overdue for another. I have to make it a conscious dedicated effort, otherwise I'm too lenient and I don't trim nearly as much as I ought. I've done the same thing with tab backlogs. Once I accidentally closed a window and went to re-open it. I couldn't remember any specific thing in that window. I left it closed and moved on.
    - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      While on the topic of save for later, I was going to clean my downloads folder by sorting the stuff I may need but then realized I had gigs of files and folders. I took the nuke approach and deleted everything. It was terrifying but I did it. What a relief now seeing how it’s been bugging me for over a year.
xenihn 8y ago
>There's a whole slew of content being created in all forms, from newsletters, blog posts, books, podcasts, music, video games, video on demand and live video. A lot of it is actually really high-quality content. We're being inundated with too much good stuff. I see all these newsletters in my inbox I don't have time to read that I want to. Tv shows, youtube videos I want to watch but don't have time for. Sounds like online dating.
- groestl 8y ago
  For 10% of the user group.
fartcannon 8y ago
I think part of the problem is that nobody wants to admit what they really want to themselves.
kakarot 8y ago
This is a major factor of the "Ratings Problem" where only 4- and 5-star ratings signify quality which people commonly overlook. [0] I'm only interested in critically acclaimed non-fiction books because anything less and I'm down to the quality I might find in a blog post... Which might still great, but there's the time I allocate for blogs, and the time I allocate for books. There's a part of me which harbors great sadness over the amount of historical art such as music and games which get completely ignored by the public with its ephemeral tastes. So as a natural reaction I've become an amateur art historian, spending lots of time going back and playing old games (not hard because I grew up on retro), listening to old music, watching old films... then spending time to learn about the people and effort behind these works of art. I even took a film history class. I have books from the 1600's on my reading list. Some of them require learning another language which at some point I will have to set aside the time to do. So how the hell am I going to have time to appreciate the cornucopia of art being thrust at me today from all directions? It seems today you have to make the choice of appreciating the here and now vs appreciating the past. If you aren't an archivist or historian chances are you simply won't have the time to go back and explore. And that's worrisome, because whereas the pace of masterpieces being released throughout history has been quite slow and manageable, presently I feel like I consume several masterpieces a year across several mediums. All of this amazing content will be lost forever inside the noosphere, and the fantasy of living forever through your art and contributions to society is becoming more and more unattainable. [0] https://xkcd.com/1098/ https://xkcd.com/1098/
- FakeComments 8y ago
  About 300 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube per minute. That’s 1800 minutes per minute. You can look at just the best 0.06% of YouTube, and never touch the back catalog.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    The sad thing about this is all of the "less than perfect" artists whose content gets swept up in the storm. Hopefully the rise of the Long Tail will combat this to some degree, but we will have to redefine our concepts of fame and eternal life through art. We have entered the age of globalized niche culture. [0] https://longtail.typepad.com/about.html https://longtail.typepad.com/about.html
panic 8y ago
Part of the problem is this industrialist idea of using time efficiently. Where we originally quantified our use of time at work in order to make our managers more money, we now apply this ideology to our entire lives. We don't want to waste our time consuming anything but the highest-rated, most-upvoted, best-liked content. We end up having to manage not just our working life, but our free time too.
- sotojuan 8y ago
  Worse - I've noticed that most of HN likes to read productivity and self help books. Nothing wrong with that, but it means people are spending a majority of their leisure time learning how to work better!
  - hippich 8y ago
    Honest question - if not work, then do what?
    - shishy 8y ago
      Read for pleasure, explore nature, travel, paint, go to concerts, knit, etc. Anything that helps you feel relaxed and at ease. I'm always super busy with work and side projects, but last December I went to Maui for 2 weeks and it was the best thing I did for myself: when I returned, all the things I had to do ("work") crept back in and I realized what it actually meant to be relaxed (because in this condition, I'm definitely anything but that).
      - hippich 8y ago
        So basically hobbies and travel... My problem - my hobbies is what my friends see as a "work" (and I identify it as a work as well). Traveling is alright (although it is plenty of work with whole family, which includes two kiddos) - but it gets old rather quickly (again, perhaps part of it the fact that it is family traveling, so entertaiment options are rather limited)... Perhaps kiddos get old enough I might re-discover traveling as a way to relax, but until then doing nothing makes me more anxious than just keep working. And these self-help/productivity book are just tools, just like "c# for dummies" books.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
It’s funny because I tried to hyper optimize my email so I would get less of it, but now I’m going in the opposite direction, largely because of email lists and how terrible websites have become. I’d much rather get email newsletters than trying to stay on top of RSS, which feels like I’m always drowning. And emails are usually much simpler and no flashing ads, no auto playing video, no unlimited scroll, etc.
- AJ007 8y ago
  There is some irony here in how terrible and clunky the Gmail web UI has gotten, yet how standardized and seamless email has remained. Hacker news has had a recurring discussion about disrupting email. Of course some startup would love to vacuum up all email in to their own walled ecosystem, wrap it in ads, and charge companies to reach their own customers. Please, no.
- drdeadringer 8y ago
  I use RSS to keep up with podcasts, with a couple webcomics and [so far] one comedian's tour-dates list. I'm hovering around 50 subscriptions, which I feel is "too much" but I'm not sure which great content I should cut; I have a few ideas, but it's in the small single digits against the 50. For myself, I'm likely much better to start slashing at my email. What suggestions do you have on how to "hyper optimize" with that?
goldfeld 8y ago
Maybe we just need to dip into what we feel at each moment and forget there's all this torrent passing by, probably never seen again. As for choosing non-fiction books, pick one that really ticks the fancy. Then follow into what falls naturally next. Unless a person develops some intuition and freedom in this matter it's always gonna be an anxiety-driven ride through the content river. And someone will make money out of it promising an app to solve your management non-issues. I like to keep a simple big to-read list and another chnological list of things read, and try to have only one fiction and one non-fiction at at time, everything else is just a flow.

by mevile 8y ago

trevyn 8y ago

>Figuring out what the best content for me for the time I have is the problem. And, of course, sometimes the best choice is no content at all. I do wonder how increasing quantity and quality of content will effect markets and create new opportunities. Maybe Ev Williams is right and it’s about curation. Maybe something deeper.

bookofjoe 8y ago
"The best response is no response."—Dr. Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics"(1960)

nefitty 8y ago

It gets frustrating to feel like every moment another decision needs to be made. Driving to the store: what will I listen to? Free time: video games, tv, reading or what? At work: music or podcasts or radio as background noise? I am not sure if decision fatigue is real, but working from that assumption, too much of my energy is used up on ultimately inconsequential things like this...

pathseeker 8y ago
>I am not sure if decision fatigue is real, but working from that assumption, too much of my energy is used up on ultimately inconsequential things like this... I think it is and have largely given up on trying to plan entertainment for trivial things like driving to the store. I either just sit in silence and enjoy it or let someone else in the car pick radio if they want it.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
Automate your decision making progress. The same music, the same food, the same routine. Problem solved.

B-Con 8y ago

I have so many queues of stuff I want to get to. I feel guilty how little of it I consume. Sometimes just looking at my backlog is somewhat anxiety inducing. I have 245 videos in my YouTube "Watch Later" queue. (Turns out some parts of the Android YT UI has a max of 199 videos.) And a lot of those are 30min+ lectures. I probably have at least 50hrs of content queued on YT alone. And that's what I haven't watched. Sometimes I can't choose when I do have the time. I'll have the time to consume 1-3 hours of content and I'll freeze, unable to choose. And half the time I choose something new that's not on my list yet.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
Do what I do: just clear out your backlogs once in a while. Be heavy-handed and learn to ignore your Fear Of Missing Out. They're not like your Jira backlog that someone requires and expects you to work through in its entirety. They're just lists of things that are "interesting, but not interesting enough to watch/listen to/read right now". So clear them out, I bet you've had some stuff on there for over a year. I know you probably feel some attachment to them, but try clearing out one of the backlogs and see how you feel about it. I learned this when I accidentally nuked my backlog of open tabs in Firefox, which had lots of things I wanted to get around to checking out in depth. I discovered that I didn't really miss most of them, and the few I did miss, I could find again from memory.
- B-Con 8y ago
  Yes, for sure. I have done this before, but I'm long overdue for another. I have to make it a conscious dedicated effort, otherwise I'm too lenient and I don't trim nearly as much as I ought. I've done the same thing with tab backlogs. Once I accidentally closed a window and went to re-open it. I couldn't remember any specific thing in that window. I left it closed and moved on.
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    While on the topic of save for later, I was going to clean my downloads folder by sorting the stuff I may need but then realized I had gigs of files and folders. I took the nuke approach and deleted everything. It was terrifying but I did it. What a relief now seeing how it’s been bugging me for over a year.

xenihn 8y ago

>There's a whole slew of content being created in all forms, from newsletters, blog posts, books, podcasts, music, video games, video on demand and live video. A lot of it is actually really high-quality content. We're being inundated with too much good stuff. I see all these newsletters in my inbox I don't have time to read that I want to. Tv shows, youtube videos I want to watch but don't have time for. Sounds like online dating.

groestl 8y ago
For 10% of the user group.

fartcannon 8y ago

I think part of the problem is that nobody wants to admit what they really want to themselves.

kakarot 8y ago

This is a major factor of the "Ratings Problem" where only 4- and 5-star ratings signify quality which people commonly overlook. [0] I'm only interested in critically acclaimed non-fiction books because anything less and I'm down to the quality I might find in a blog post... Which might still great, but there's the time I allocate for blogs, and the time I allocate for books. There's a part of me which harbors great sadness over the amount of historical art such as music and games which get completely ignored by the public with its ephemeral tastes. So as a natural reaction I've become an amateur art historian, spending lots of time going back and playing old games (not hard because I grew up on retro), listening to old music, watching old films... then spending time to learn about the people and effort behind these works of art. I even took a film history class. I have books from the 1600's on my reading list. Some of them require learning another language which at some point I will have to set aside the time to do. So how the hell am I going to have time to appreciate the cornucopia of art being thrust at me today from all directions? It seems today you have to make the choice of appreciating the here and now vs appreciating the past. If you aren't an archivist or historian chances are you simply won't have the time to go back and explore. And that's worrisome, because whereas the pace of masterpieces being released throughout history has been quite slow and manageable, presently I feel like I consume several masterpieces a year across several mediums. All of this amazing content will be lost forever inside the noosphere, and the fantasy of living forever through your art and contributions to society is becoming more and more unattainable. [0] https://xkcd.com/1098/ https://xkcd.com/1098/

FakeComments 8y ago
About 300 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube per minute. That’s 1800 minutes per minute. You can look at just the best 0.06% of YouTube, and never touch the back catalog.
- kakarot 8y ago
  The sad thing about this is all of the "less than perfect" artists whose content gets swept up in the storm. Hopefully the rise of the Long Tail will combat this to some degree, but we will have to redefine our concepts of fame and eternal life through art. We have entered the age of globalized niche culture. [0] https://longtail.typepad.com/about.html https://longtail.typepad.com/about.html

panic 8y ago

Part of the problem is this industrialist idea of using time efficiently. Where we originally quantified our use of time at work in order to make our managers more money, we now apply this ideology to our entire lives. We don't want to waste our time consuming anything but the highest-rated, most-upvoted, best-liked content. We end up having to manage not just our working life, but our free time too.

sotojuan 8y ago
Worse - I've noticed that most of HN likes to read productivity and self help books. Nothing wrong with that, but it means people are spending a majority of their leisure time learning how to work better!
- hippich 8y ago
  Honest question - if not work, then do what?
  - shishy 8y ago
    Read for pleasure, explore nature, travel, paint, go to concerts, knit, etc. Anything that helps you feel relaxed and at ease. I'm always super busy with work and side projects, but last December I went to Maui for 2 weeks and it was the best thing I did for myself: when I returned, all the things I had to do ("work") crept back in and I realized what it actually meant to be relaxed (because in this condition, I'm definitely anything but that).
    - hippich 8y ago
      So basically hobbies and travel... My problem - my hobbies is what my friends see as a "work" (and I identify it as a work as well). Traveling is alright (although it is plenty of work with whole family, which includes two kiddos) - but it gets old rather quickly (again, perhaps part of it the fact that it is family traveling, so entertaiment options are rather limited)... Perhaps kiddos get old enough I might re-discover traveling as a way to relax, but until then doing nothing makes me more anxious than just keep working. And these self-help/productivity book are just tools, just like "c# for dummies" books.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

It’s funny because I tried to hyper optimize my email so I would get less of it, but now I’m going in the opposite direction, largely because of email lists and how terrible websites have become. I’d much rather get email newsletters than trying to stay on top of RSS, which feels like I’m always drowning. And emails are usually much simpler and no flashing ads, no auto playing video, no unlimited scroll, etc.

AJ007 8y ago
There is some irony here in how terrible and clunky the Gmail web UI has gotten, yet how standardized and seamless email has remained. Hacker news has had a recurring discussion about disrupting email. Of course some startup would love to vacuum up all email in to their own walled ecosystem, wrap it in ads, and charge companies to reach their own customers. Please, no.
drdeadringer 8y ago
I use RSS to keep up with podcasts, with a couple webcomics and [so far] one comedian's tour-dates list. I'm hovering around 50 subscriptions, which I feel is "too much" but I'm not sure which great content I should cut; I have a few ideas, but it's in the small single digits against the 50. For myself, I'm likely much better to start slashing at my email. What suggestions do you have on how to "hyper optimize" with that?

goldfeld 8y ago

Maybe we just need to dip into what we feel at each moment and forget there's all this torrent passing by, probably never seen again. As for choosing non-fiction books, pick one that really ticks the fancy. Then follow into what falls naturally next. Unless a person develops some intuition and freedom in this matter it's always gonna be an anxiety-driven ride through the content river. And someone will make money out of it promising an app to solve your management non-issues. I like to keep a simple big to-read list and another chnological list of things read, and try to have only one fiction and one non-fiction at at time, everything else is just a flow.