Questions to ask when managing the deluge of information to consume

information.md

1. Is this something you can save and look up later when your work context makes it more salient? You'll get a lot more out of it then.

2. Does random sampling of the text or its conclusions suggest that this is worth your time? Generally, things are either fractally good or fractally bad.

3. Can you get 50% of the value in 1% of the time? Sometimes you can, if what you needed was just a reference to something you didn't know about.

4. Is this information more general and useful, or are you in some backwater of meaning? Gossip, ephemera, personalities and memoirs, half-baked ideas.

5. Did you arrive at this information through your own attentional mechanisms? Consuming the feed can be fun but costly in time. How much more interesting is it, really, than the information that is relevant to your goals? Are you prioritizing momentary pleasure over information hygiene and attentional control?

6. Given that you'll never make it through a backlog of 1000 items, have you re-made a shorter to-do list with the things you might actually tackle?

7. Are you prioritizing this item merely because it's "at hand", over the better information on that list?

8. Compared to these inputs, would you get more out of being buried in your own thoughts and work (for now)?