Update 1: Based on initial feedback, I might be conveying this wrong. The proposed idea is not yet another way to find interesting things to read. Example use case: The moment you visit a URL, just as you are about to read it, the browser tells you that “hey, before you read this, this might actually be a waste of your time.”
If you’ve never seen that expression “TLDR” on the web, that’s short for “too long didn’t read”.
I use Instapaper to save things I want to read for later when I have time to read. But just as my pre-Instapaper days, the problem is that my list of things to read grows faster than I actually have time to read and de-queue items from the list. As you’ve heard, “wealth of information creates poverty of attention“. Not a new problem that I’m sure a lot of people suffer from.
We all have our own ways of coping, so I wonder if we could take all the methods (that work) and productize it.
There is an old story about a finance professor and a student who come upon a $100 bill lying on the ground. The student stoops to pick it up. “Don’t bother,” the professor admonishes. “If it were really a $100 bill, it wouldn’t be there.[1]“
The above story captures the essence behind one of my own tactics to cope[2]. (more…)
