How do you prioritize things to read?

Question

There are so many great articles posted in Hackernews every day that worth reading. Plus if you are a developer you have to read a lot of articles about new techs and frameworks every week. Also there are enormous books about technical and non-technical subjects that we should read to upgrade our minds.I've been struggling prioritizing articles, news and books to read. there are so many folders left on my desktop with bunch of pdf files, named "To Read - X". Or for example so many tabs of blogs and posts that I wanted to read, left on my browser. Of course I did well in organizing them, so I used a tab manager to create folders of tabs containing tens of them.So, how do you manage and prioritize your to-read things? Maybe my problem is that I should select less things to read and be more strict in selecting them. Or maybe I should limit the amount of things to read and do not add more things to get everything read. I don't know which one is the best solution. If you've had similar problem please let me know how did you get your solution for it.

khannavid · Accepted Answer

As a lazy person, I know that I never gonna read as much articles/books that some other folks read in their time. I also want to be among the best at my field. The only way around this situation, is to choose my reading list wisely. I have a limited time and there's unlimited options to read. I think this approach has been worked for me.
How I choose my books? I read extensively about their reviews. And I don't force myself to finish a bad book!
How do I choose my articles? I have a trello board for it! In my trello board I list every promising article I seen around the web. I list these articles based on their subjects. When I have time to read something I look at all the options I have in a certain category and I choose what seems to be the best and/or most relevant article among them.

vijayshankarv · Answer

Don't worry too much about prioritization if your goal from reading is to learn. Set aside some time and then pick whatever article/book you most feel like reading and just get going. If it bores you, then stop and move on to the next one.
For interesting articles, take notes using a system that works for you. Progressive Summarization and Zettelkasten are good ideas.
Over time, you will realize that most articles and books are not worth the time investment to deeply read them and get quicker at skimming to get the gist.
Some useful links:
Better note-taking misses the point -https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQ...
Gutting books - https://twitter.com/varsha_venkat_/status/110774091578163609...

giantg2 · Answer

I would cut down on the number of stored articles. If you haven't read it in 1 year, is it really that useful?
I prioritize based on my needs and then on my wants. So I will read articles relating to work and stocks first. Then I will read articles or books related to my hobbies.
I let books sit on my shelf indefinitely, although I usually get to any I buy pretty quickly.
I try not to bookmark articles or blogs unless it has some specific/unique knowledge like a recipe that I know I will want to find later and won't be easy to google.

markus_zhang · Answer

I tend to narrow my focus. Current focus is PyQT, Five eyes intelligence community and social casino. I need to further reduce them to more actionable focuses.

verdverm · Answer

Night stand, and also peer comment about not prioritizing

dredmorbius · Answer

Zettelkasten / POIC.A reading journalish thing.