How to: Effective Curiosity in Vastness of Internet

About Tutorial

This is a collection of software, browser plugins, general principles for information gathering and processing for humans. Although naturally I’m sharing what I use, my hope is that at least some techniques are applicable to your daily life and will improve your information processing efficiency. Generally, I think to find value in this tutorial you have to be:

1. curious;
2. somewhat obsessed with efficiency;
3. desire to be better;
4. aware of limited attention span and mental power.

Let’s call these four axioms, I will refer to these throughout the text.

Tutorial touches on various levels of technical and abstract layers of information parsing, so feel free to skip sections that are of low applicability to you. I will try to make section headings as descriptive as they can be.

Platform

Mobile vs Computer

Smartphones are great for scrolling and adding information sources to watch lists, bookmarks. I strongly suggest against reading anything beyond a Twitter thread (long-form reading) on smartphone. Because: higher eye fatigue due to shaking, life happening around (distractions cause lower focus, thus material comprehension and retention), substantially more tracking due to lower privacy controls and advertising, lower precision to close small [x] popups etc.

As for notebook, I use Windows 7 operating system (OS), because in eastern Europe it’s free. Because of axiom 2 money could be allocated to investing, thus freeing future time.

Windows7 offers far less connections to the mother ship – Microsoft, wide support for software is stable … and is no longer supported. Yes, I need 1-2 years to move my work away from VBA to modern frameworks and I can finally switch to opensource Linux distributions I have spent half 2020 exploring.

Apple? If your work does not require computational power, imo you are a victim of branding. Only in 2022 Apple is adding support to self-repair (due to increased legal scrutiny), which historically had significantly hampered to prolong machine life cycle, but increased Apple revenue because old drive could not contain your movies, so you had to buy apple cloud storage and moving things from there is a pain in the ass, so you choose a new Mac instead. But you could have invested that.

Notably, for the last 8 or so years, I have not used antivirus as well. Let me explain:

Malware Threat Landscape Has Changed

Antivirus software drains power, RAM, creates significant headwinds in user experience (UX) whether you connect your USB drive, try to download a file, install software. In some cases antivirus companies increase their monetization by selling user data. But what about security?

When was the last time you have used flash drive from a stranger? CD’s USB flash drives used to be how computers got infected. Nowadays most of malware people get is by clicking on shiny banners on suspicious sites. If you go easy on porn, are mindful of what you click on and use something like uBlock Origin (read on) plugin, there’s little chance you get your system infected.

Organizing File System – Organizing Life

There are people who like order, and those that live in chaos. Take desktop for example. You probably have seen some computers littered with icons. Same goes to structuring your files in the system. Why would you want to invest time in organizing your files?

Because you deposit once, but retrieve files multiple times (otherwise why store it?). As an example let’s say you collect photos. These are in a single folder “Photo”. After two years of multiple events, when you want to find a single image in folder of say 1000 files, even if you know approximate date and have sorted files by date, you will still spend more time finding it than if you had:

Photos > 2020 > 2020 Agatha Birthday Party

folder structure. And this applies to everything. If you don’t know your chaos, or it grows (you will ultimately don’t know what’s where) – you are wasting your future time.

Gadwin Printscreen – Better at Making Screenshots

I have been using this software for more than 10 years now and I could not recommend it enough. It’s similar so Snipping Tool on Windows, but has more customizations.

Showing someone something on the internet is a common case. But we may not want to show all of our screen, just a specific part of it: maybe that’s a meme, folder window with proof of file modification date, something on the webpage, etc.

Gadwin Printscreen runs on startup (there’s option for that) and is silent in among tray icons. All of my screenshots inside this blog have been shot with Gadwin.

Ctrl + Printscreen (you can customize hotkeys) will activate greyed background and enable you to select a rectangle to take a screenshot of. This is automatic cropping on the go. At this point (besides a slower launch of Snipping Tool) software works same as native Windows tool. But when you press Enter, that is the end of it:

Screenshot is in copyclip (can customize) as well as file ready to be used in your desired location (I use desktop and cleanup shortly after)

If you need to point people to specific text place for focus there’s plugin for websites we will talk about later and there’s an option to replicate Snipping tool post-processing window for highlight:

As you can see, you can opt in to open screenshot in paint on capture. Immediate copy to clipboard is useful when you want to add image to chat application (say messenger) or embed screen into email. RAM usage on my machine: ~30MB.

Mouse over Keyboard in Windows

Nothing brings a sense of power user (ya, the gimme the dopamine) more than using keyboard to navigate in Windows and web. Not only does it significantly boost browsing speed, but also lowers probability of accidental clicking. Touchpads are out of the question if you are not a terminal user. One can not possibly outperform keyboard + mouse on touchpad.

Here’s a list of commands that I use nearly every day:

• Windows key -> to open start menu. Indexing works for most frequently used files, applications. Type, select via arrow keys, Enter -> you are where you want to be.
• Windows + D -> minimizes all application windows and shows desktop. Hit again and all windows are shown again in exact order as before.
• Windows + E -> Opens explorer to navigate filesystem.
• When in explorer, arrow keys, Backspace and Enter -> to navigate, return to previous folder or enter a folder.
• When in explorer Ctrl + E -> points to search bar, so files within a current folder can be found (if could not be accessed through start menu)
• Obviously a combination of Ctrl + X, Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V -> cut, copy, paste things.
• Ctrl + Shift + Esc -> Opens Task Manager. Kill a process, program or check resource consumption.
• Alt + Tab -> Shift focus between different application windows (Windows + Tab if you want a fancy version)
• Alt + F4 -> Close application (Shutdown Windows when on Desktop)

Generally in operating systems and web (saver in filling forms, login information):

• Tab -> Jump to next item / field / area
• Shift + Tab -> Jump back
• Enter -> Enter folder (duh), login, register, open link, presses buttons in focus on various OS dialog boxes.

Seems a good way to transition to web, because there’s our treasure trove of valuable information, right?

Browsing Internet Effectively

Browser and Privacy

Before Microsoft Edge (some years ago) I looked for fastest browser. At the time it was Chrome, I since then Chrome has been my preferred gateway to web. I have disabled most privacy intrusive options on both Google and Chrome. For most private matters, or to cross-check how things look / work on other browsers I use Tor Browser.

We will further dive into privacy aspects when talking about uBlock Origin.

Search Engine

As for Search Engine, I had tested DuckDuckGo, Brave in the past. At a time, Chrome had the best SERP (Search Engine Results Page). When solving for coding problems, I would save time navigating to top result page, because Google used to show excerpt with the answer I was looking for right there. Due to Google being on antitrust hearings and legal scrutiny, that has changed, I will eventually jump to an alternative. Notably, both Google and Youtube search has deteriorated in my experience lately.

If my prediction is right, Microsoft might be far bigger player in search than Bing is today.

Bookmarks vs Tabs

We probably all know people who have a habit of opening up new tabs, rarely closing them down. This is a problem, which attracted even researchers attention:

Why organizing your tab “read lists” in tabs is problematic:

• Browser with extraordinary amount of tabs eats up RAM;
• Again, slower indexing (finding what you want) “I know I have it open somewhere here”. If you need it fast, you open up a new tab and search for it again, exacerbating the problem;
• reliability – probable browser, machine crash – risk of all opened bookmarks of last [month? half year?] going down the void.
• When you start a new day, fire up a browser (or instantly see it, because you are afraid to loose your “tabs”), you get emotionally discouraged. Your productivity is affected by emotions.

Why do some people choose tabs over bookmarks in the first place?

• trust in future self you will actually read everything you have opened (in reality, this probability decreases exponentially while number of tabs increases;
• initial burden of setting up folder structures of bookmarks and immediate reading list (works for me, may not work for you);
• effort, however minuscule, of closing a tab targeting a tiny [x];
• hurdles of adding URLs to bookmarks.

Let’s address the bottom two points in reverse order.

Bookmark it

The whole point of bookmarks is to clean up working space and create mental bandwidth for effective information parsing. Here’s what my bookmark tree looks like:

And the arrows on the immediate bookmarks bar open up my read list:

As you can see, I have things to catch up to…

Bookmarking is so easy. Two mouse clicks. Star -> Done.

However you can do the same with keyboard:

Ctrl + D -> Tab -> Tab -> Tab -> Space or Enter. Once you do it several times, it’s lightning fast.

Removing a bookmark is simply adding another Tab press to bring focus on “Remove” button. Try it!

If that’s something you want to archive for future reference, simply change a Folder field or simply drag bookmarks around.

Chrome: Reading List

Chrome has introduced Reading List optionality ~2 years ago. I noticed I am more productive with bookmarks bar, as I see things inside it immediately. However when enabled, it adds unnecessary clicks when bookmarking, so i have it disabled via:

chrome://flags/#read-later

Faster Browsing Tips for Chrome

Not many people know, that middle mouse wheel click in chrome opens or closes tabs. This significantly improves speed and ease of tab management.

When you click a link, you don’t know (without inspecting) if link will open in same window or in new window. By clicking a link with mouse wheel you can be sure current window won’t disappear. Here’s an example of opening and closing tabs all with mouse wheel.

Useful Chrome Shortcuts

Much like Windows, Chrome enables you to be a power user using shortcuts. Faster, with greater precision. Here’s a list of commands I use daily:

• Ctrl + L -> activates address field. Type start of bookmark name or url, use arrows keys and Enter to go to it (for most visited sites you know url by heart)

Another application is fast search / indexing. Typed words with spaces are interpreted as search query and google search is called on Enter. Continuing on…

• Ctrl + T -> you guessed it. Opens a new tab;
• Ctrl + Tab -> move on to next tab (useful for up to 6-8 working open tabs, another benefit of bookmarks over tabs content management);
• Ctrl + F4 -> Close current tab or browser window if there’s a single open tab.
• Ctrl + F -> Toggle search mode. Type in query, hit Enter to go through all matches. Hit Esc, to remove highlighted queries in text or Ctrl + F, hit type another query;
• F5 -> to reload a page. Useful in some time sensitive web applications / sites / interfaces;
• F12 -> Enter developer tools. We will use “Network” tab when we talk about methods to by pass some paywalls.

Two levels for focus (third uncovered in uBlock Origin below):

• Ctrl + Shift + B -> hides/shows bookmarks bar. If you need additional screen height (for max screenshot resolution) or less temptations away from long form reading material.
• F11 -> Enter full screen, for maximum concentration.

If you don’t already, I suggest you give these commands a conscious few days effort to see if it can sustainably help save time for you in the future.

Useful Browser Plugins

I use more plugins, than I introduce a reader, but these are most likely to be useful regardless of background. If you find yourself frustrated with webpage or doing repetitive task (picking a color, measuring banner height, clearing cache, etc) there’s probably a plugin for that.

Youtube NonStop

Whether you are watching a lecture series or working and listening to a long playlist, Google will eventually try to save its’ resources and pause playback:

This plugin may not close the window, but playback and autoplay won’t be affected. Plugin on Chrome store.

Right Click Translate

Before talking about what this self-explanatory plugin does, you probably should setup chrome for your native languages you don’t want chrome messing around with and auto-translate for all the rest. This is chrome auto-translating Estonian business site based on my chrome settings:

Also make sure you setup Chrome, so it does not bother you with these annoying translation popups on websites with languages you are comfortable reading in. Language should not be a barrier these days when there are tools. Quality of information matters regardless of where it’s coming from. On to the plugin…

English is not my native language. Also I may stumble upon short comments or tweets in foreign languages. Right-click translate to the rescue. Select a text -> right-click -> Translate.

This opens up a google translate page with detected language translation to English on new tab (no worries, we learnt how to dispose of tabs FAST). Right Click Translate on Chrome Store.

Grammarly

Whether you type online, Grammarly will highlight words and offer corrections on typos, punctuation, style in more seldom cases. I used to use this plugin for a year, then for some reason stopped (you might have noticed the typos in tweets). I have resumed using Grammarly when reviewing my plugins while writing this post.

You can see suggestion I did not take on the right.

If you work with written English language you will likely find it useful. Grammarly on Chrome store.

Highlighter

Much like in word or excel documents, when you want to show highlight certain sentence in webpage of pdf (opened in chrome), plugin easily allows to do just that. Select the text you want to highlight, right click and highlight (or use default ALT + H):

You can choose from 4 colors post highlighting. Highlighter on Chrome store.

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader

This one is my personal 1/2 must-have plugins. As you probably guessed: plugin reads articles, blogposts and even pdfs. Why would you want to do that?

• eye strain – information flows regardless if you look at the material or not. Working at computer for 12h+ makes any break extremely precious;
• you can (depending on difficulty) multitask (eat, do something else useful at or away from keyboard);
• you can follow text on your smartphone in more comfortable position away from keyboard;
• you can adjust reading speed. Naturally I am a slow reader, so I put a speed just above the speed I’m comfortable with, which forces me to follow up faster;
• double the channels for input information to the brain (visual + audio). This increases chances for material retention / comprehension materially (you are probably not reading to your self aloud);
• intonation is not that bad. Sometimes the bot will read millions as meters, but overall I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality;
• easy mouse and hotkeys controls for repeating last sentence, stopping, resuming and going forwards / backwards.

Shortcuts I mentioned in the last point are:

If material is hard, I would hit ALT + P, read a sentence or paragraph several times myself or hit ALT + < (ALT + ,) to repeat current section aloud while attentively following with eyes. All relative on difficulty and interest levels.

Read Aloud on Chrome store.

Return Youtube Dislike

Ah the ugly corporate interests… First they tweaked colors of like / dislike bar, then moved to numbers, eventually deleted dislike count altogether. All in the name of suppressing critical thinking and keeping users watching youtube for as long as possible (nowhere time = money is more true than in marketing).

This is critically important not only when researching something, but when solving a time-sensitive problem. You want the best solution as fast as possible. If I aimed at UX, I would even display the like/dislike ratio in search results page for each video. Luckily there is a fix.

In my experience, plugin fails sometimes, but that happens something like 1/20 of time. Return Youtube Dislike on Chrome store.

uBlock Origin

I hate advertisements with passion. For years I have been installing ad blockers for all my relatives and friends, whether I saw there isn’t one. Throughout the years I tried Adblock Plus, AdGuard AdBlocker – these are passive, simple and work well most of the time. Please note, that uBlock Origin is a gun brought to a knife fight. This comes with added complexity and tweaking in some cases to make the websites work correctly. But regardless I find it to be the most useful multipurpose plugin, which you already saw in action at one point.

uBlock Origin on Chrome Store.

How to use uBlock Origin

Below see my explanation on Financial Times (ft.com) homepage. Two columns on each script loaded (starts at base domain line (in this case ft.com)) represent blocking scope. First is global (allow/block specific script on all websites). Second column scope is only this particular site (financial times)

Below gif shows, how to never be bothered with Reuters GDPR popup ever again (unless Reuters devs change code and references to elements are lost). One time effort in seconds, continuous time dividends:

Excuses for ugly cropping -other screen parts are not essential for tutorial scope.

If you want to get up to speed fast, this is probably the best guide:

Disadvantages using uBlock Origin

Recaptcha

Some websites are broken due to excessive blocking. For example, many forms on the internet are validated with Google Recaptcha. If you don’t allow google plugin, website’s backend will not see Google’s validation and form will fail to submit. This is an example on local forum, that uses google’s recaptcha.

As you can see I have enabled Google first party scripts on all websites (top left corner on Ublock Origin panel).

Youtube embeds

Similarly, blocking of 3rd party frames blocks embedded youtube, Vimeo videos on other sites (you would not see above youtube tutorial if not for this setting:

Permanent fix for all youtube embeds across the internet:

Occasional functionality break

If website is javascript heavy, some things might not work. If you are short on time or visiting the site this only time, your best move is to turn off plugin for this site completely and reload, using a fat OFF sign.

Advantages using uBlock Origin

As you probably saw, this plugin allows for high granularity control over what is loaded to you. Take for example Reuters pop-up we dealt with above. What cookies you select to “allow” makes to difference for uBlock Origin, we only dealt with annoying front-end pop-up. The real blocking of scripts was handled by plugin regardless of our selection.

This massively improves privacy online (reduces visibility for marketing agencies), additionally it improves your machine security and loading speeds. Think that’s all? Ublock Origin also enables to block scripts enabling paywall, which effectively means if website developers were not smart enough, you can play around and read content for free.

At one point I have been reading Bloomberg, which is known to be super tight-ass about monetizing its content, purely tweaking which scripts to load.

Here’s an example of a much simpler paywall, uBlock Origin has no problem dealing with:

Last thing I want to mention: you can significantly clean up a long-form reading HTML page yourself by clicking around with the same tool as in last gif. Click around the elements you want to delete.

The best part? When you use Read Aloud, cut sections are not included. Thus you can prevent plugin reader from reading “recommended”, calls for subscriptions, etc.

Did I mention ad-less youtube experience? That’s included, although that’s always a race between Google and open-source hackers maintaining plugin.

Other Methods to Bypass Paywalls

Internet went through its first iteration of monetizing content through e-books. Later mass media caught on new economic model – paywalls. And a new frustration for economical user. Luckily developers are humans and humans are flawed. The way paywalls are built, allows some to be bypassed. Let’s go through different techniques to get the information we need.

Stop Loading

Some sites are built, so that full article is loaded, then a javascript is loaded, which deletes 80%+ content from the bottom and adds a banner offering to subscribe. So, all we have to do is stop page loading when full article is loaded. Problem is – page may load super fast, so how to catch it at the right moment? F12 – Enter Narnia of developer tools.

In “Network” tab, enable 3G slow speed throttling:

Hit F5 or simply reload button and it will be far easier to hit “Stop” at the right time, next to URL bar. I have encountered some sites eventually loading javascript when scrolling down (reading), so to prevent this, Ctrl + P -> to cook it to a PDF as soon as whole article is loaded.

Internet Archives

For a long time I have read most financial portals articles via archive.fo, which is not offline. You would search for an article url on archive and get it there. If it’s not there, you submit url for archive, script does it’s job and a minute – two later you would read article for free.

My experience with other archive websites is poor. Bloomberg, WSJ got too sophisticated for simple tricks like that. But that doesn’t mean your target site is archival-proof. Try it.

The basic gist is websites want search engines to index their content. Thus if google can see it, crawlers can read it, archive engines can get it.

Financial Times

Have you ever stumbled upon this following a link on social media?

Copy the title, search for same article on google, click, voila:

Why, how? Financial Times wants to onboard new subscribers. If a user has never visited Financial Times before and after hitting SERP link to article was faced with paywall, that would be bad UX for both FT and Google, so refer source is evaluated and is determining factor if FT allows you to read article. This may or may not work for other sites.

Bloomberg

After all the changes that were made historically, currently, I know only one loophole without messing with IP / MAC spoofing. Developers did not block audio article reading when site is not fully loaded.

This means, when you load an article, you get few seconds window to play Bloomberg’s own article reader player:

In case you think I’m kidding. Here’s another timestamp:

Closing paywall popup with background blur is again easy with uBlock Origin, but the article is unfortunately cropped to few sentences only.

Clearing Cache and VPN’s

Some websites offer few articles for free before an annoying paywall is shown. If a website is poorly constructed it may only rely on cookies. Delete a cookie – site sees you for the first time, thus you can again go through those few free ones.

Different sites register different things. Switching to new IP on your VPN might also work. Other sites may use MAC address logging to record user behavior on site. That can also be spoofed, but personally, I have never gone that far.

Sourcing Material

This section is probably individual for everyone, depending on one’s interests. It’s widely known, social media has become a window to the world and for some – a primary news channel. Throughout the years I have found Twitter to be the most suitable medium to reach the world, due to: speed, reliability, feed control, founding ideas and slick design. Poor ad selection (I only see those on mobile, uBlock duh…) is a testament Twitter so far has been optimizing for UX. Caveat here is a recent CEO change and related policies, limiting citizen journalism:

I do have massive respect and occasionally visit Reddit too. If I wanted to get into a niche community such as welding, I would probably get onto reading /r/Welding. Facebook groups don’t have any content organization structure and are inferior in this sense.

Although Twitter is not the only channel I use to work with information, I will only cover frameworks applicable to sourcing information from Twitter.

Constructing Twitter Interest Graph

Remember axioms at the top? Curiosity and limited time are key in this section. Optimizing Twitter experience for maximum signal is not an obvious task. I assume you have Twitter account and know the basics.

Feed (or useful-interesting info / time) is a precious resource. Generally, I found “Topics” to be rarely helpful, but I have seen user reports completely going off “following” model to “Topics”. Lists however are more useful and I carefully experiment there.

Following Count

I first noticed I no longer see certain accounts I follow at around 400-500 follows. So, something to be mindful of: Twitter algo can’t possibly squeeze direct follows and prominent accounts (Musk type figures) replies, likes, retweets and occasional recommendations onto a single feed. Understandable. Takeaway here is to carefully curate a following list, even review it from time to time.

I have a promise to myself to never cross following count above 700. Once – twice a year I go through a list of all accounts I follow and check whether I’m still conscious of their presence. Have algo dropped them from my feed? Have they been banned, are inactive for half year+ and need to be unfollowed? People change, so do their interests, in that case, is it still relevant? All important questions optimizing for maximum signal feed.

Train your feed

Bringing someone back to your feed is a feat I am still unsuccessful. I have tried visiting their profile, opening their links, liking tweets, just so algo would see I find this particular account relevant. All to no effect. Setting up notifications is a phase I do not feel comfortable entering yet (I considered setting up notifications on Cloudflare Twitter account though and may experiment in the future).

However reducing noise is way easier. Take an effort to train Twitter algorithm with your explicit preferences. When you find a tweet that is not relevant, mark it as “Not interested in this tweet“. Options will appear with further negative reinforcement options:

If none apply, leave it at that. A practical personal example is a Bitcoin developer I follow: when covid vaccines started, my feed got heavily populated by his anti-vax replies, retweets, etc… Took time, but now I preserve his qualified opinion on technical matters and saved my feed from populism around vaccine debate.

Negative reinforcement on Twitter works.

Evaluating a New Account to Follow

Huge prominent accounts in the field may appear a necessary follow, but I have a contrarian view. As an investor, I follow a lot of other investors. A lot share same respect for Michael Mauboussin, who’s work I have referred to in last-years’ Value vs Growth article. Michael’s aura and works are so important in investing community, that when he farts, I can immediately hear the soundwaves. Here’s a recent example:

But if you went to his account, most tweets are event promotion, retweets of his presence features or references in others’ work. Signal is lost in the prominence of fame, so given the circumstances, there’s no reason to follow him directly.

For this very reason typically I like accounts that have between few hundred and 10K followers. When evaluating new account I scroll and skim all recent ~10-20 tweets. I also take note of tweeting frequency. One can not simply be a signal all the time, not to you personally at least. Framework I have in mind:

for every written word, 10 had to be read first.

If he’s tweeting material stuff non stop, he’s not the source. So better focus effort in finding the source. I like accounts, that tweet no more than 5 times a day. Occasionally I would calculate average number of tweets per day based on account age and total tweets on profile page. Note, that some people like to communicate ideas in tweet threads.

Personal > Institutional

Rarely does following institutions like statistics department of a certain country will yield desired results. Typically institutions tweet about events, PR about ESG practices and almost zero added value. This applies to all sorts of institutions – even media.

But institutions are made of people, and they often will tell more nuanced story, than a blogpost of official annoucement. Most importantly they will share their personal opinion. Seek the people behind the news: engineers, journalists, scientists, field experts.

Algo vs Chronological

Also take note, that Twitter allows for you to select how you want your feed to be sorted:

Personally I like algorithmic sorting more, but if you haven’t tried, I suggest you try feed with latest Tweets.

Exemplary Twitter Follows

There’s no point in full list of my follows, it’s public. But to illustrate how diverse Twitter experience can be, here are some examples:

• AuroraIntel – unusual activity related to planes, ships, missle launches, war with more weight on middle east;
• Scott Duncan – window into Earth climate change, anomalies, weather forecasts often from satellite perspective;
• Andrey Sizov – agricultural futures and food markets with focus on black sea region (top wheat exporting region);
• Visegrad 24 – zero hedge for eastern flank of Europe with weight on politics, culture and anti communist voice;
• Aaron Lewis – developed mind, great blogger, interesting reads;
• Nella – visual art in cinemma, photography. Ideas.

Frameworks for Working with Information

This guide is already too long and I’m feeling as though I’m running of things to say, so I’ll wrap up with one key thing. Interesting people produce interesting things. Also, we live in accelerating world, information availability and internet brings world to our knees.

Articles, blog posts, Tweet threads, Facebook posts, youtube videos, lectures, webinars, interviews, newsletters, transcripts, company statements, market / world / breaking news, newsletters, tutorials, podcasts – it’s easy to get bogged down, especially if you are curious. But be realistic. Don’t make your bookmarks or youtube watch later list your tabs – the thing you never attend to and get discouraged anytime you even think about reading from there.

Mentally categorize each thing you bookmark by:

• length;
• difficulty;
• form;
• personal revelancy (critically important <-> interesting);

Does a particular bookmark require your eyes? (lots of diagrams, charts). Is that a podcast I can listen while playing chess, or something I have to listen attentively? Perhaps it switches it’s category in the middle of reading (you realize it has lots of wisdom and nuanced points, you better integrate with a fresh mind)?

It’s a work you are doing for yourself and yourself only, so it’s all relative. Find your sweet spot and optimal process.

If I have whole day to catch up with bookmarks, I would start a day with the most difficult and lengthy material and finish the day with youtube webinars. Absorbing information and forming opinions consumes limited mental bandwith, so don’t take too much difficult material all day long – brain will ultimately refuse to accept it. Work smart.

Closing thoughts

This guide is by no means exhaustive. I haven’t touched youtube, that’ another universe of useful resources. I also haven’t showed how I would go about researching a new company or a topic. But perhaps that’s too personal and would not be widely applicable anyways.

Ironically I wrote this guide about productivity over the span of week during my probably least productive time of the year. Besides I’m currently mildly sick. However, I hope you found some of the advice and techniques useful. If you integrate at least one bit, which improves your daily internet experience I’ll consider my time not wasted.

Happy and productive 2022!