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authorLars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>2012-04-06 22:26:42 +0100
committerLars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>2012-04-06 22:26:42 +0100
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downloadgtdfh.liw.fi-62b85f00852b404a6fb0a4c34599166ec6072b6c.tar.gz
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+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.
+