[kevsim]

I tend to focus on two types of value: entertainment stuff and actually-useful-for-my-job stuff.

A lot of what I read here on HN is the former. I'll probably never write my own compiler, but for some reason I can't resist reading an article that goes into gross detail about a 3% speed up in the Rust compiler. I don't sweat retaining the info I read. At best it's stuff to discuss around the lunch table with colleagues.

Then there are things that are truly useful for what I'm working on day to day. However, like with the pure entertainment stuff, I don't sweat about retaining everything I've read and putting it to good use. The reason is that there's a simple rule I try to follow - things that are important keep bubbling up. If we've got a problem and we need to fix something, then I'll dive extremely deep into reading about the problem we've got, and I'll put the stuff I read into practice _immediately_. By doing so I'll learn a lot and retain a lot. If I read an article that I think is interesting and could be useful _someday_ I might file a github issue to remind me to follow up, but usually not. Usually it's fine to let it go and dig in if and when there's a real problem.