Catch the highlights! There are some tools that will send you eg newsletters with the top items.
You can't read everything! Better to both consume and to also produce. Doing one or the other too much is worse than doing the right amount of both.
Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#32I learned very quickly that most of it isn't actually very good (ie its outside my sphere of understanding so if it's well written it can seem good when actually later you come back to it and realise it was garbage) or relevant to me so I ignore most of it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#33I mainly read the comments, rarely the articles themselves. (That's not to say that I don't read articles in general — I do, but I mostly find them via Twitter.) Usually, I'm much more interested in what the community has to say about a given topic or issue than I am about the object-level news.
Same. I use hckrnews.com to have an up-to-date list of recent topics discussed on HN, quickly skim it for headlines that stand out, but mostly focusing on highly-commented posts (50+ when in the morning, 20+ later on in the day), and I read comments first.
hckrnews.com looks cool. Thanks for sharing.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#34I think it's not about "good" or "bad" but rather relevant or irrelevant. What is relevant to you is in part for you to decide.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#35I mainly read the comments, rarely the articles themselves. (That's not to say that I don't read articles in general — I do, but I mostly find them via Twitter.) Usually, I'm much more interested in what the community has to say about a given topic or issue than I am about the object-level news.
Same. I use hckrnews.com to have an up-to-date list of recent topics discussed on HN, quickly skim it for headlines that stand out, but mostly focusing on highly-commented posts (50+ when in the morning, 20+ later on in the day), and I read comments first.
Normally I don't do this but: third here, didn't expect it to be so common.
Probably the difference for me is that I live in Europe so I tend to catch up to a bunch of posts from the evening/night in the US during my morning coffee and then open hckrnews.com again by the end of the afternoon when some new posts begin to crop up.
I'll read the articles with interesting headlines but always jump to the comments first, some articles that I really think could help me in the future (or deserve further reading or research) I will save to my todo-list or in my Pocket account and then set a reminder to re-read/research in a given day when I'm free.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#36If you read hackernews from emacs, it doesn't matter if you read everything. Everyone around you will fear you.
https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#37same way I manage other things, which is sort of the opposite of what one might do in SEO management - I drop the long tail, and only focus on what's left. Of course the contents of what's left depends on your personal priorities of what you find to be important. Now if that also becomes too much, rinse and repeat.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#38This reminds me of the explore vs exploit dilemma:
https://joshkaufman.net/explore-exploit/
I'm still working on understanding this trade-off better... It seems to be a pretty good lens for looking at things, though.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#39I first filter front-page submissions based on number of comments.
Out of those, I focus mostly on things that will be immediately useful or relevant, and avoid reading stuff that merely piques my curiosity.
With these two criteria applied, I find that I only have two or three submissions per day to read. It's quite nice.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage to go through so much of good content posted on HN?
#40I don't even try to read most of it. Just let it flow past.
On a work-day morning while I'm drinking my coffee and waiting for my brain to boot-up, I go through the current pain page and open the comment pages for any interesting posts/articles. I read the comments to see what the community here thinks, and then maybe flip to the article itself. The decision to do this is mostly based on how the comments look, so I'm using them to get a precis, but sometimes I go to the article anyway. Then I dip-in several times during the day, treating the main page like a twitter-style firehose. Just snack on a couple of articles and reactions, then back to work.
I sometimes read HN at the weekend - when in my experience it has a different vibe, with more thoughtful, longer content. Then I find myself spending more time on the articles and less on the comments.
I mostly just try to let what I read filter into my kind of ambient awareness of HN-type subjects, rather than remembering it. I occasionally flag something a favourite, and even less occasionally bookmark something, but I very rarely go back to old content as there just isn't time.