Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

My grandmother always wonders why the younger generations are always so tired or so that's what she sees. She of course was never as tired when she was younger but other than health issues she really is a clear mind. She knew what her husband wanted her to know and that's about it. Everything else is wrong and she sticks to it.

For example I like to bake bread as a hobbyist and do no knead from time to time. She also likes to bake but given her arthritis she can't do it anymore and she really missed it. I got her everything she would need but she wont have it.

I kinda do this as well. I don't really use the phone from 6pm to 10am unless I get a call. Reading some fiction before bed does help me sleep better. Even so I find reading still tires me out as if it's no different than reading an article.

I wonder if we really are the first generation to have this type of problem, though. It seems reasonable to me that people would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books published over the decades preceding the widespread adoption of the internet. There's just tons of material out there. Even in the academic world, the amount of papers published every year - even before the internet - would probably overwhelm anyone if they tried to keep on top of it.

I'd love to see some pre-internet articles complaining about the pace of publishing and strategies for coping with the onslaught of information at that time. It seems reasonable that it would exist, and I'm sure we'd all find it rather quaint :)

I just got this on my kindle since it seems to have pretty good reviews. Your comment doesn't really outright say that the book helped you become more focused and disciplined - would you say that it did or didn't?

It's not at all a silly question, I've experienced the same and, reading the comments, it seems many others have too.

My own problem was being too attracted to novelty, every little bit of information that arrived in front of me was the most important piece of information in the world. But, before I could act on it, the next piece would arrive. This manifested in me having a long lists of books and articles to read, things I wanted to do, things I wanted to learn, and, eventually, dissatisfaction because I couldn't keep up with it all.

I "solved" my own problem by just routing every distraction as it arrived into a look-at-later list. Then when later arrived I'd scan through, decide what was actually worth following up on and just delete the rest. If you do this then you will realise how unimportant most of those distractions were.

Going onwards the key is not to have 10 books and 800 articles and 100 more articles, I'd suggest purging them. Focus on one book, ignore the rest. After you finish that first book then pick one of the rest. If some of the books were just bought on a whim and you don't have the enthusiasm to read then just delete them, it's not a problem, no one will judge you. Delete all of the articles, if they're important enough then you'll see them again.

Afterwards, don't buy any more books until you've finished the ones you have. Notice the difference between not wanting to read a book that you have and wanting to read the one you're thinking about buying. Is it really important? Do you need it now?

With the articles, continue to use Instapaper, it's a great way to avoid the immediate distraction. But only keep a limited amount of things in there. Notice how quickly you add new articles and how quickly you read them. If you're adding faster than you can read then delete the surplus. And if you notice the list becoming unwieldly then delete them all and start again, you won't miss anything, nothing is that important.

The same idea applies to many things, remove the impatience of "now!" and it's easy to view and prioritize them. You'll never be able to do everything, so just do the things that you want most and purge the rest. They're not important, it doesn't matter.