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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

by 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.
solarkraft 8y ago
> Turns out some parts of the Android YT UI has a max of 199 videos. It also turns out the YouTube service limit of videos in the "Watch Later" list is at 5000 videos :^)
avip 8y ago
Get someone on fiverr to watch it for you.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> I have so many queues of stuff I want to get to I had this problem. Here is my solution: 1. Push stuff to physical. Newspapers? Paper delivery. Magazines? Mailed. When the new one comes in, the old one gets thrown out. 2. Set up a dedicated e-mail account for newsletters. Same rule as above. New one in, old one deleted. No exceptions. News is an information feed. An opportunity to become educated. It should not become an obligation.
- rutierut 8y ago
  That sounds like an RSS reader.
- PakG1 8y ago
  >> 1. Push stuff to physical. Newspapers? Paper delivery. Magazines? Mailed. When the new one comes in, the old one gets thrown out. I don't think pushing stuff to physical solves my problem of not consuming my desired content. It would solve my problem of having an increasingly longer queue, but at the cost of the environment. I think I would prefer to stay digital.
HNLurker2 8y ago
Watch later is useless, when you press it you know you will never watch it.
- prawn 8y ago
  I have a To Read folder in my bookmarks bar. I'd argue that it's useful even though I almost never read anything placed in there: it helps me by giving me the opportunity to bookmark and close a single tab and edge a tiny bit closer to internal peace.
  - shortcord 8y ago
    I have the same perspective. Last night I had probably 20 tabs open on Reddit that I wanted to read. Didn’t have the time to look through them all so I bookmarked them in Pinboard, closed the tab, and moved on with my life. Will I ever read them? Probably not, but it’s nice knowing they’re not lost in my internet history and that I could.
    - Toorkit 8y ago
      I solve this by just keep the tabs open. I use tree-style tabs, so anything interesting gets stuck in a tree that I can collapse. It might stay there for a month, maybe more. Eventually I'll either find the time to read/watch/whatever, or realize it doesn't interest me anymore. Either way, after a while that tree gets closed and the cycle starts over.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Read Later saving to Instapaper is one of the few things of that type that I actually get around to reading much of the time. I use it judiciously for long reads that I genuinely want to do but can't give the 20 minutes or whatever it deserves right now. Then they're synced to my iPad and make good reads while I'm traveling.
- delecti 8y ago
  It's wonderful for me. I use it to queue up everything I follow so I don't have to manually interact to keep it going. Mine currently has 1 item that I'm keeping there as a quasi-bookmark, but I churn through it pretty regularly.
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
I'd very much consider speeding up your videos. I watch things like educational videos, interviews, news videos etc mostly on 2x. Movies I often watch on 1.5x, not always but typically at least 1.3x. Sometimes I go up to 2.5x or 3x when needed, e.g. speeding through a Let's Play video during a part which isn't particularly interesting any slower.
- wuschel 8y ago
  > Movies I often watch on 1.5x, not always but typically at least 1.3x. For me, I would ask myself if these movie is worth watching, and if the teaching materials are worth ingesting.
  - IkmoIkmo 8y ago
    Of course, I always do, too. Funny thing is that some of this stuff wouldn't be worth watching at 1x, but are worth watching on 2.5x. For example I really enjoy watching replays of strategical games, but much of it is frankly quite boring in real time. Take a typical 2+1 hour game of chess, with minutes between moves, condensed into a 45 minute match with commentary, that's an excellent way for me to enjoy relaxing after a day of work while the washing machine is churning and I'm eating dinner. But I'd absolutely have no time (much less interest) to sit there for 3 hours watching people think. You have to wonder, what are the odds that all of human content is paced at a perfect speed for all of human consumers? What are the odds that every lecturer for example, speaks at the same pace, all with the same information density of the concepts they are talking about? The answer obviously is virtually zero. And so if you have different paces of information density, then the norm should be for every individual that for some content, you adjust the speed of the video! Some videos pack a ton of information in five sentences, others take ten sentences to convey the same idea. (a density of concepts per sentence) And some lecturers pack those say five sentences in one minute, while others do it in two. (speed of speech) If everyone enjoyed the same pace, and all content was at the same pace, then you'd never have to adjust content-speed. But both of those two statements aren't true. So again, the norm should be that any individual may want to speed up at least some of his content. In the end it really depends on the content. I don't speed up movies as much for example as news though because in the former, moments of quietness and facial expression are much more meaningful than in the latter and it loses its impact when sped up too much.

by B-Con 8y ago

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.

solarkraft 8y ago

> Turns out some parts of the Android YT UI has a max of 199 videos. It also turns out the YouTube service limit of videos in the "Watch Later" list is at 5000 videos :^)

avip 8y ago

Get someone on fiverr to watch it for you.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> I have so many queues of stuff I want to get to I had this problem. Here is my solution: 1. Push stuff to physical. Newspapers? Paper delivery. Magazines? Mailed. When the new one comes in, the old one gets thrown out. 2. Set up a dedicated e-mail account for newsletters. Same rule as above. New one in, old one deleted. No exceptions. News is an information feed. An opportunity to become educated. It should not become an obligation.

rutierut 8y ago
That sounds like an RSS reader.
PakG1 8y ago
>> 1. Push stuff to physical. Newspapers? Paper delivery. Magazines? Mailed. When the new one comes in, the old one gets thrown out. I don't think pushing stuff to physical solves my problem of not consuming my desired content. It would solve my problem of having an increasingly longer queue, but at the cost of the environment. I think I would prefer to stay digital.

HNLurker2 8y ago

Watch later is useless, when you press it you know you will never watch it.

prawn 8y ago
I have a To Read folder in my bookmarks bar. I'd argue that it's useful even though I almost never read anything placed in there: it helps me by giving me the opportunity to bookmark and close a single tab and edge a tiny bit closer to internal peace.
- shortcord 8y ago
  I have the same perspective. Last night I had probably 20 tabs open on Reddit that I wanted to read. Didn’t have the time to look through them all so I bookmarked them in Pinboard, closed the tab, and moved on with my life. Will I ever read them? Probably not, but it’s nice knowing they’re not lost in my internet history and that I could.
  - Toorkit 8y ago
    I solve this by just keep the tabs open. I use tree-style tabs, so anything interesting gets stuck in a tree that I can collapse. It might stay there for a month, maybe more. Eventually I'll either find the time to read/watch/whatever, or realize it doesn't interest me anymore. Either way, after a while that tree gets closed and the cycle starts over.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Read Later saving to Instapaper is one of the few things of that type that I actually get around to reading much of the time. I use it judiciously for long reads that I genuinely want to do but can't give the 20 minutes or whatever it deserves right now. Then they're synced to my iPad and make good reads while I'm traveling.
delecti 8y ago
It's wonderful for me. I use it to queue up everything I follow so I don't have to manually interact to keep it going. Mine currently has 1 item that I'm keeping there as a quasi-bookmark, but I churn through it pretty regularly.

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

I'd very much consider speeding up your videos. I watch things like educational videos, interviews, news videos etc mostly on 2x. Movies I often watch on 1.5x, not always but typically at least 1.3x. Sometimes I go up to 2.5x or 3x when needed, e.g. speeding through a Let's Play video during a part which isn't particularly interesting any slower.

wuschel 8y ago
> Movies I often watch on 1.5x, not always but typically at least 1.3x. For me, I would ask myself if these movie is worth watching, and if the teaching materials are worth ingesting.
- IkmoIkmo 8y ago
  Of course, I always do, too. Funny thing is that some of this stuff wouldn't be worth watching at 1x, but are worth watching on 2.5x. For example I really enjoy watching replays of strategical games, but much of it is frankly quite boring in real time. Take a typical 2+1 hour game of chess, with minutes between moves, condensed into a 45 minute match with commentary, that's an excellent way for me to enjoy relaxing after a day of work while the washing machine is churning and I'm eating dinner. But I'd absolutely have no time (much less interest) to sit there for 3 hours watching people think. You have to wonder, what are the odds that all of human content is paced at a perfect speed for all of human consumers? What are the odds that every lecturer for example, speaks at the same pace, all with the same information density of the concepts they are talking about? The answer obviously is virtually zero. And so if you have different paces of information density, then the norm should be for every individual that for some content, you adjust the speed of the video! Some videos pack a ton of information in five sentences, others take ten sentences to convey the same idea. (a density of concepts per sentence) And some lecturers pack those say five sentences in one minute, while others do it in two. (speed of speech) If everyone enjoyed the same pace, and all content was at the same pace, then you'd never have to adjust content-speed. But both of those two statements aren't true. So again, the norm should be that any individual may want to speed up at least some of his content. In the end it really depends on the content. I don't speed up movies as much for example as news though because in the former, moments of quietness and facial expression are much more meaningful than in the latter and it loses its impact when sped up too much.