How does an infovore manage information overload?

Rather than think about this in terms of technologies, first think about it in terms of scheduling. Every piece of incoming information falls into one of three priority levels; either it's worth an interruption, it's worth putting in a queue where it's guaranteed to be read, or it's something to spend surplus time on but okay to miss entirely. Most technologies span several of these priority levels; for example, emails from whitelisted senders are worth an interruption, emails from strangers which might be spam are only worth handling in batches, and mailing lists can be skipped.

The more information you get through a given channel, the lower that channel's priority must be. For example, most people treat phone calls as worth an interruption, but high-profile figures use secretaries and handle their phone calls in batches. If information from different priority levels can't be separated, then it all ends up at the lower level; for example, people who get too much unfiltered spam check their email less often. Good filters are important.

Some information sources require you to poll them; for example, loading a webcomic's page to see if there's a new comic. This is only worthwhile for high-volume, low-priority information sources - that is, you only load it if you have time to waste, and expect to always see something new. Lower-volume sources are better handled with something like an RSS feed, so that you can group a bunch of them together and see only things you haven't read.

I would suggest that, if you're sufficiently html-knowledgeable, or if you have a fairly good web-page editor, you create a home-page full of links, papers, blogs, rss feeds, whatever, that you want to keep up with.

I have such a home page and it allows me to have some kind of base back to which I can ground myself when I stray too far into the abyss/buffet of internet knowledge. In particular I find that the average screen size is good for such a knowledge cache: if you need a space bigger than this then you're indulging in a buffet too big for your palette.

My job is to read AND understand information such that I can repeat it back clearly and precisely, often succinctly from 7:30-4:30. 99.9% of this information comes off of computer derived sources. When I am home, at lunch and in the evenings (when I am not exercising or eating) I am either on the computer reading more or reading a hard copy book. On an average day I probably, between work and home, read through 250-300 articles or studies. In general I have about 80-90% retention with comprehension nearly complete - some of the more abstract things obviously take longer.

Here are my tips:

• If you use the same sources on a daily basis (like LW/OB) then create a hierarchy of visits. I find Firefox really useful for this with the bookmark toolbar and RSS feed - that way I can go left to right sequentially and see what I have read already. That way if I only have a short period of time, I get the most out of it.

• Open only the articles which you are very interested in, and open them all at once so that you can see them in your tabs. A word of caution though, don't necessarily read them in the order that you open them. There is the tendency to read in order, however I have found that if there is an article I am really excited about, then that is the only one I will think about when I am reading through another one. This method allows you to take your work in chunks rather than burning through one particular source all at once.

• Continually update your hierarchy of sources, refining which give you the best information

• If you use aggregators such as reddit - read the comments. Often they distill or give better context than many articles. Contributing to the comments is also very helpful as you can ask questions and get the most out of the information you just read.

• Give yourself a break. After a half dozen or dozen articles, depending on their weight, go look at something completely non-demanding or get away from the computer all together. I have found that over the years, with increasingly complex subjects my "breaks" become less and less complex eg: after reading two PLOS studies I take a 10 minute 4chan break.

• Get rid of distractions. That includes Instant Messengers, open programs and other things which draw you away from the text. I have found that if I get pulled out in the middle of a story or article, my comprehension drops dramatically.

• If there are parts of whatever you are reading that you don't understand - look them up immediately. This is a huge part of the comprehension aspect. Yes, it will slow you down considerably. However once having a good understanding, you will have better context for the rest of the article and can better frame whatever fact you just learned.

• Lastly. Don't worry about your eyes going bad. They wont.

A comment said one needs a goal first, which is true. I'll call that goal a "question".

Doing so partially solves the problem of what I call the Delegation of Curiosity: when someone or something implants a question in your head that you feel compelled to have the answer to by passively consuming the contents proposed by the invader.

This happens because you delegate your curiosity to something external; your questions/curiosity controls you, and so delegating it means someone else controlling you.

Moreover, discovering an answer by oneself through active efforts means you'll be more grateful for it, be more likely to apply it and remember it better.

Moreover, when in a state of boredom you're susceptible to the Delegation.

It's then a good idea to exit the web browser or internet instantly. Make it a habit to be done upon Noticing. This can be done physically (preferable), by walking away from the device, or virtually, by closing it.

Beforehand, make sure the browser is as distant as possible from access, and disable any features or facilitators of access that might shorten that gap. Example, by putting it inside many folders with no shortcuts that lead there.

There's still the problem of Potentially Relevant Information, when you don't know whether info that lies beyond a question is relevant; it might be.

I found that generalizing the question and getting a grip on the terminology and history of the things involved with it help to predict whether you'll find what you seek and which words to use. Encyclopedias, such as those of Philosophy like Stanford Plato, help.

It must be media in text format, preferably with an index, so you can more easily find what you need by reading just the headers or first lines of the paragraphs.

Instapaper. It puts a button into your bookmarks toolbar. When you find something you want to read, click the button. Later, you go to Instapaper where all those pages are saved for you. For bonus points, subscribe to your Instapaper RSS feed. Use a feed reader with good organizing tools that let you prioritize and highlight items. This, of course, is because you will quickly realize how few saved items you are actually interested in returning to.

I've tried many tricks (my favourite for a while was Google Notebook) and Instapaper is far and away the one that saves me the most time - and saves me from a lot of information I really don't need.

I consume 90% of my incoming information via several hundred RSS feeds.

I read these feeds in Google Reader.

I organize these feeds into 3 folders labeled 0, 1, and 2. 0 contains feeds I feel I must read. 1 contains feeds I'd like to read. 2 contains feeds that are less important, but I'll read if I'm bored or have free time. (Be sure to somewhat frequently reevaluate each feed. Move it to the appropriate folder or unsubscribe.)

When I start reading, I make sure I read everything in folder 0. Time permitting, I cascade through the remaining two folders.

As I go through my feeds, I read ones that are fairly short and star ones that require more time from me (like most LW posts). At a later time, I go through my starred posts and make a quick judgment on each one to decide if I want to invest the time reading it. Unstar and forget about the ones which don't pass. Read the ones which do.

Familiarize yourself with the keyboard shortcuts for Reader. It makes the experience of using it more enjoyable.

I think that you need an actual goal to be effective. If it's keeping yourself amused, a sorting algorithm is hardly necessary. If it's keeping abreast of cutting-edge research in a few specific fields, it's going to be very different than trying to learn the basics in a large number of diverse fields. It also depends heavily on if you're working with a set amount of stuff to read or a set timeframe to read it in (I'm guessing the former). This is an interesting hypothetical problem, but it's hard to specify a real solution without some idea of what type of efficiency you are trying to maximize.

That said, I heartily recommend bookmarking all of the websites you frequent and then putting all those bookmarks into a folder on your toolbar in Firefox; you can then simply right-click "open all in tabs" and have one window window with everything you want to read, and you can easily close anything without new or interesting content.

I think that you need an actual goal to be effective. If it's keeping yourself amused, a sorting algorithm is hardly necessary. If it's keeping abreast of cutting-edge research in a few specific fields, it's going to be very different than trying to learn the basics in a large number of diverse fields. It also depends heavily on if you're working with a set amount of stuff to read or a set timeframe to read it in (I'm guessing the former). This is an interesting hypothetical problem, but it's hard to specify a real solution without some idea of what type of efficiency you are trying to maximize.

I suffer from the same problem but on a lower quality level, I mainly consume news of various kinds. The main problem here is to identify those parts which actually contain information I do not as of yet know.

If some delay is acceptable (as it seems to be the case with your sources) maybe an automated filter based upon citations (or something equivalent) might be possible. Of course you would import all biases of the people who put the citations, then again it might work as a simple crowd-sourcing mechanism.

I think this post is pretty off-topic...