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author | Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> | 2012-04-06 22:26:42 +0100 |
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committer | Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> | 2012-04-06 22:26:42 +0100 |
commit | 62b85f00852b404a6fb0a4c34599166ec6072b6c (patch) | |
tree | 6e7665b8aaa2cb49da417a703702af88eb70479c /read-and-review.mdwn | |
parent | 177024a8b6a47fccbcfe838e3eaaf8c71b86c0d0 (diff) | |
download | gtdfh.liw.fi-62b85f00852b404a6fb0a4c34599166ec6072b6c.tar.gz |
Add chapter on read&review
Diffstat (limited to 'read-and-review.mdwn')
-rw-r--r-- | read-and-review.mdwn | 59 |
1 files changed, 59 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/read-and-review.mdwn b/read-and-review.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 0000000..019ba22 --- /dev/null +++ b/read-and-review.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +Read and review folders +======================= + +I'm bombarded with things to read or watch. Friends and co-workers give +tips on interesting, funny, or useful things to read. Bosses point me +at other things to read. I'm further subscribed to a bunch of +RSS/Atom feeds, and I follow a few news sites, which often have stuff +I want to read. And so on. There's no end of things I could read. +The army of monkeys trying to randomly re-create Shakespeare are filling +the Internet with other stuff instead. + +I cannot possibly read everything at once. I need a way to deal with +things I want or need to read, so that when I have time to read, I can +go through stuff that is waiting to be read. + +It's important, at this point, to point out, pointedly, that there is +often no need to read everything. The most important way of dealing with +information overload is to be selective of what you spend brain cycles +on. However, however selective you are, there's always things to read. + +The **read and review** pile, or folder, or list, is an important tool. +When you find, or are given, something to read, or watch, or listen to, +or otherwise process, and you put it on the pile. In old times, +our ancestors would print it on paper and put the paper on a pile. +These days, purely digital things are practical. + +* **Web pages** can be bookmarked. You can keep a "read and review" + bookmark folder. When you've read the page, remove the bookmark. +* You can also save web pages on your local hard disk. This is useful + for reading offline, and also for archiving the page in your filing + system. The Firefox MAFF extension is excellent for this. +* You can have a "read and review" folder for e-mail as well. Newsletters, + and any other e-mail that's long and takes a while to read, can be + put there. +* I read e-books either on my Kindle device, or on my laptop, depending + on the format. Unread e-books are on the home screen on my Kindle + (or if the list grows very long, in a folder for unread books). PDFs + and other big-page formats are in my laptop's "read and review" folder. +* I keep paper books, magazines, etc, in random piles around my home and + at the office. They're rare enough and few enough that I don't need + a dedicated place to keep track of them. Likewise for DVDs to watch. + +For web pages: I used to do the bookmark thing, but it turned out to be +annoying, so I now use MAFF heavily. + +I usually try to read things in a FIFO order. I've found that a document +that's boring or unpleasant or otherwise easy to push later, always gets +pushed later. Since there's always new material coming in, there's +never a time when the boring document is the only one to be read. Sticking +to FIFO, unleass there's an urgent reason to avoid it, is a good way +of avoiding a pile of documents that never get read. + +My threshold for putting something into "read and review" is low. +That means a lot of things go in there that I don't really need to +read. That is actually OK: at the time when I encounter a link on +IRC, for example, I may not have time to even evaluate the document +enough to decide whether it is worth my while to read it. So I just +stuff it into "r&r" and evaluate it when I have time for it. + |