I recently realized that I was taking in a large amount of information every day but retaining very little of it. Between HN and Reddit, I would "learn" dozens

I recently realized that I was taking in a large amount of information every day but retaining very little of it. Between HN and Reddit, I would "learn" dozens of things each day and end up not getting a lot of value out of it. While this is tangential to the problem that you're having, I can definitely empathize. Two things that I'm trying out now: 1) Write down things that you learn each day and review them weekly. I find this helps me to filter out a lot of the extraneous information and focus in on things that could be useful in the future. 2) Monthly or bi-monthly focus on one specific skill or area of knowledge. Out of all the things I could read/watch/listen to, I try to concentrate on things that relate to one thing that can make me better. Bookmark or save interesting things that you come across, but limit your attention to just books or articles about one topic for the rest of December and January. The other stuff will still be there when you come back to it. The tl;dr is to write out your goals and come up with a plan to achieve them. Focus on one and set aside time each day to make incremental progress. Everything else will take care of itself.