Building fieldstone walls: you don't plan ahead to gather these particular stones for that wall. You just walk around and pick up a few good-looking stones for the future and make a pile. Then when you get around to building the wall, you look into the stone pile and find a nice match for the section you're working on at the moment. Make a habit of gathering mental fieldstones. Once you have some piled up, the process of building walls becomes easy. It's a good habit to get into. The overabundance of information has resulted in a poverty of knowledge and attention. Information is raw data in a given context. For instance, the fact that Microsoft bought some company for a billion dollars is just information, and there's no shortage of information these days. Knowledge imparts meaning to that information. You apply your time, attention, and skill to information to produce knowledge. Looking at that particular Microsoft acquisition and knowing how it might change the market, provide new opportunities, and destroy others constitutes knowledge. You can use a wiki implemented in your favorite text editor - a wiki-editing mode. This gives you WikiWord hyperlinks and syntax coloring or highlights within your editor environment. I've used this feature in vi. - that's actually what my sites are [The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39278631) [The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. - Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better) - VAGUE LANGUAGE CAN MAKE DATA IRRELEVANT [When do we stop finding new music? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40147534) [When Do We Stop Finding New Music? A Statistical Analysis](https://www.statsignificant.com/p/when-do-we-stop-finding-new-music) - we eventually naturally filter out the "useless" information, but will often get stuck with what we're familiar with - in all reality, it doesn't really matter, since the quantity of information NEVER has as much meaning as its quality Information consumption is only good when it produces something When reading blogs or books or listening to podcasts or audio books, take action notes. consider the facts/minute: - your time is more important than anything else, so the faster you consume the key information the better off you are - ideally, you're consuming 5 facts/minute, or one every 12 seconds - however, most people without practice consume about 2 f/m - multitasking cuts this down to about a .5 f/m limit - most standard podcasts are assembled to be .2-.4 f/m - the trouble with multitasking, however, is that you have to be attentive to WHEN a fact will express - this is actually easy to intuitively discover: pay attention to the commanding tone of voice the speaker makes when they make an assertion they believe - the best thing to do is to either do something VERY boring (e.g., dishes), or just find a higher f/m source - there is also an EFFECTIVE/NEW facts/minute, which is how it applies to YOU - you'll notice a drop-off on new information after the first few minutes - stop consuming when you get below 1 nf/m the convenience of simply saving the information has deadened us to the significance of that information - we must write things down that have legitimate value the trick to working through a LOT of information is to not let the feelings hit about the experience until AFTER you've consumed it - this takes training, but basically means memetically [memorizing] what you experience, then recollecting what you did while [meditating] or [decompressing](fun) later information is NOT as important as knowledge (go through DKIM pyramid) Videos are great for information but useless at transformation. "News is what someone else does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." Most short-term debates about the future are NOT about what is going to happen, which is often fairly obvious, but about when. Emotional reactions are usually far more significant than events themselves. ## Reading * Read it twice if you don't get it. Google it if you still don't get it. Try to understand what you're reading before moving to the next thing. * Don't keep more than you can read in the next 4 weeks on your Kindle ## Caring & focus * Family first, work last * Protect your time * You won't have more time later, so avoid collections of "to do" or "to watch/listen" lists. * Don't use any read-it later app * Don't keep big todo lists * Don't keep more than you can read in the next 4 weeks on your Kindle [Daniel Miessler](https://danielmiessler.com/blog/new-luxury-good-information/) (2017) The New Luxury of Having Good Information [Patrick Louis](https://venam.nixers.net/blog/psychology/2019/03/01/internet-time.html) (2019) Time On The Internet [The coming tsunami of fakery | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32594010) [The New Normal: The Coming Tsunami of Fakery](https://grandy.substack.com/p/the-new-normal-the-coming-tsunami) [Learning From the Feynman Technique | by Evernote | Taking Note | Medium](https://medium.com/taking-note/learning-from-the-feynman-technique-5373014ad230) [Richard Rusczyk](https://artofproblemsolving.com/articles/stupid-mistakes) (2015) Stop Making Stupid Mistakes developing good habits and organizing your work. [Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353328) [Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better](https://www.gkogan.co/removing-stuff/) [The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38890489) [UsefulnessHarpers.pdf](https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf) - SIFTING THROUGH LOTS OF GOOD INFORMATION IS HIGHLY CRITICAL AS A SKILL [Andy Matuschak](https://andymatuschak.org/books/) (2019) Why books don’t work > Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? [DIKW pyramid - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid) [Innovating Now!](https://innovatingnow.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/ck-theory/) (2011) CK Theory : The Concept Knowledge Theory [Exploring your mind](https://exploringyourmind.com/socrates-triple-filter-test/) (2020) Socrates' Triple Filter Test is a great life lesson that can help you deal with gossip and rumors. The triple filter test is about Truth, goodness, and usefulness. [The joy of reading books you don't understand | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40870280) [The Joy of Reading Books You Don't Entirely Understand - Reactor](https://reactormag.com/the-joy-of-reading-books-you-dont-entirely-understand/) [You are not dumb, you just lack the prerequisites | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41338354) [You Are NOT Dumb, You Just Lack the Prerequisites](https://lelouch.dev/blog/you-are-probably-not-dumb/) [Mark Kingwell](https://thewalrus.ca/why-being-bored-is-good/) (2019) Why Being Bored Is Good [Lev Manovich - New Media: a User's Guide](https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/new-media-a-user-s-guide) 1. numerical representation - can be represented as quantitative information 2. modularity - can be modified 3. automation - can be performed faster 4. variability - can be swapped out 5. transcoding - can be transposed ## awesome lists [awesomerank/awesomerank.github.io: AwesomeRank pages](https://github.com/awesomerank/awesomerank.github.io) [awesomerank/rank: awesomerank.github.io builder](https://github.com/awesomerank/rank) - these lists are deceptive: lowish-quality information auto-parsed - you often need 1 good thing there, but it'll often require more sifting than you'd realize ## fact-checkers [Who checks the fact checkers? From the point of view of an uneducated layman. Originally published 1st of August 2021](https://thinkspot.com/discourse/1ZuJnX/post/drdoom/who-checks-the-fact-checkers-from-the-point-of-view-of-an-uneducated-layman-originally-published-1st-of-august-2021/A6tAmQN) ## memex NOTE: under the memex philosophy, the computer geek's mind can become EXTREMELY powerful, until the power goes out - the downside of having a "second brain" is that it doubles the [points of failure](fix) [The Small Website Discoverability Crisis (2021) | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38276951) [The Small Website Discoverability Crisis @ marginalia.nu](https://www.marginalia.nu/log/19-website-discoverability-crisis/) [MEMEX - The Small Website Discoverability Crisis [2021-09-08]](https://memex.marginalia.nu/log/19-website-discoverability-crisis.gmi) [Use a work journal | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40950584) [Use A Work Journal To Recover Focus Faster And Clarify Your Thoughts](https://fev.al/posts/work-journal/) [markwk/qs_ledger: Quantified Self Personal Data Aggregator and Data Analysis](https://github.com/markwk/qs_ledger) - TALK ABOUT THE QUANTIFIED SELF! ## disinformation [How (Not) To Report On Russian Disinformation](https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2020/04/15/how-not-to-report-on-russian-disinformation/) ## reading better [Farnam Street](https://fs.blog/reading/) A Helpful Guide to Reading Better [Peter G. Klein](https://organizationsandmarkets.com/2010/08/31/how-to-read-an-academic-article/) (2010) How to Read an Academic Article [Morgan Housel](http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/how-to-read-financial-news/) (2017) How To Read Financial News [Nathan Kontny](https://m.signalvnoise.com/speed-reading-2ff843053cc6) Speed Reading tips [Jeff Atwood](https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental-2/) (2014) Because Reading is Fundamental / spend less time talking and more time reading [Markus Harrer](https://www.feststelltaste.de/extreme-reduction/) (2017) Extreme Reduction how to fit the whole learning subject of one class into a half a dozen tweets. [bulimic learning](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bulimic%20learning) [Cramming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramming_(education)) [Farnam Street](https://fs.blog/2017/10/how-to-remember-what-you-read/) (2017) How to Remember What You Read [Robert DiYanni](https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-gain-more-from-reading-by-taking-it-all-in-more-slowly) (2021) How to gain more from your reading | There’s more to words than meets the eye. Deepen your appreciation of literature through the art of slow, attentive reading