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I liked this and will be the first to admit I have an information ingestion problem that the internet has made many times worse. In grade school I nearly faile

I liked this and will be the first to admit I have an information ingestion problem that the internet has made many times worse. In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. And even though my parents caught it and pulled me out I never did as well as I could have because at some level the issue persisted, even now and I'm 50 years old. It really has been a problem my entire life. I suspect it's kind of like the evolutionary desire for sugar. Useful when sugar was rare, deadly when sugar is cheap, refined and readily available. Same with the desire for information. We can only healthily process so much and we only need so much and it needs to be in the proper form. It's so bad sometimes I'll have multiple tabs open at a time paging back and forth at light speed, or listening to informational audio and trying to read at the same time. Or surf the net for 14 hours straight. Like a wino greedily slurping a bottle as fast as he can with another ready to go in the other hand. I never got into video games which always seemed like complete boring waste of time. The ironic thing is I never would have found the article if I weren't frantically scrolling HN looking for the keys to the universe.

anthk 5y ago
Just open http://68k.news http://68k.news and https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org, ditch anything else. Read them just daily, for 20 minutes. Enough for news. On books, get adult mistery gamebooks, they are random enough to force yourself on your previous choices (and your character's skills) and having to improvise to win instead of being a static reader. EDIT: 68k URL.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  LOL, top headline right now on text.npr.org is classic clickbait style: "Congress may change this arcane law to avoid another Jan. 6"
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Right? That's a puzzling comment. Low level sweater wearing soft voiced .gov propaganda isn't usually high on my interest list. Although come to think of it, he might have a point. Maybe if I stuck with that I wouldn't be tempted to keep going back.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
nickfromseattle 5y ago
>In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. This is a very familiar story. Even today it's still an issue. I have missed the gym, or been late to a social obligation hundreds of times due to getting stuck reading something. While the behavior does have negative impacts, I generally view it as a positive thing. I know a little about a lot, and I can generally have an engaging conversation with anyone, about the things they want to talk about. I think knowing a little about a lot also helps me in the periphery of the things I do go deep into. For example, I've read hundreds of articles on Hacker News about cyber security and have read countless comments by cynical devs explaining that companies don't take security seriously because it doesn't create revenue. Today as a non-technical founder, the security posture of my organization is 10x better than my peers (including technical founders) at similar sized (and even bigger!) orgs. You spoke specifically about the negative impacts - do you see any positive impacts?
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Yep there are a lot of positive impacts. Like you, I feel I know a little about a lot of things. By the time I was in maybe 6'th grade I suspect I had better knowledge of world history, different cultures, ecology and a whole lot other topics then most of my teachers. At least at a superficial level. Even though a lot of books I was reading were fiction I knew a lot about the world. So (as you say) a lot of times when I need to know something I know where to look or have a baseline to start from. Also I think I understand how things fit together holistically better then average. And my research skills are pretty good, separating the wheat from the chaff and rapidly getting to the meat of a topic takes a lot less time then others I've noticed. But, it hasn't made me rich lol. Perhaps because I have too many interests and they aren't always the most immediately useful. And there have been other problems.

anthk 5y ago

Just open http://68k.news http://68k.news and https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org, ditch anything else. Read them just daily, for 20 minutes. Enough for news. On books, get adult mistery gamebooks, they are random enough to force yourself on your previous choices (and your character's skills) and having to improvise to win instead of being a static reader. EDIT: 68k URL.

DarylZero 5y ago
LOL, top headline right now on text.npr.org is classic clickbait style: "Congress may change this arcane law to avoid another Jan. 6"
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Right? That's a puzzling comment. Low level sweater wearing soft voiced .gov propaganda isn't usually high on my interest list. Although come to think of it, he might have a point. Maybe if I stuck with that I wouldn't be tempted to keep going back.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

nickfromseattle 5y ago

>In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. This is a very familiar story. Even today it's still an issue. I have missed the gym, or been late to a social obligation hundreds of times due to getting stuck reading something. While the behavior does have negative impacts, I generally view it as a positive thing. I know a little about a lot, and I can generally have an engaging conversation with anyone, about the things they want to talk about. I think knowing a little about a lot also helps me in the periphery of the things I do go deep into. For example, I've read hundreds of articles on Hacker News about cyber security and have read countless comments by cynical devs explaining that companies don't take security seriously because it doesn't create revenue. Today as a non-technical founder, the security posture of my organization is 10x better than my peers (including technical founders) at similar sized (and even bigger!) orgs. You spoke specifically about the negative impacts - do you see any positive impacts?

mythrwy 5y ago
Yep there are a lot of positive impacts. Like you, I feel I know a little about a lot of things. By the time I was in maybe 6'th grade I suspect I had better knowledge of world history, different cultures, ecology and a whole lot other topics then most of my teachers. At least at a superficial level. Even though a lot of books I was reading were fiction I knew a lot about the world. So (as you say) a lot of times when I need to know something I know where to look or have a baseline to start from. Also I think I understand how things fit together holistically better then average. And my research skills are pretty good, separating the wheat from the chaff and rapidly getting to the meat of a topic takes a lot less time then others I've noticed. But, it hasn't made me rich lol. Perhaps because I have too many interests and they aren't always the most immediately useful. And there have been other problems.