[firecall]

Read Books, is the answer I think.

The entire online news chain is polluted it seems to me.

If you have access to a decent Library, I believe the benefits to the individual by using it are:

1) economic, save you money 2) social, you interact with people 3) physical, you are moving around 4) mental health, you are using a different part of your brain and being proactive by planning to engage in new knowledge

Then hopefully you can feel positive, optimistic, and look forward to reading the books you just borrowed!

Then you reappear the cycle when you return them!

[wyclif]

I have a gigantic Dropbox folder with hundreds of PDF tech books that I am slowly working through. The focus is on the canonical and classic over the hippest or latest new thing. There have been a number of books that I read when they were fairly new that are classics now, like some of the Wiley titles on networking. It's one of the best things you can do for your career. Whenever you have some extended downtime, instead of hopping on social media and doomscrolling, open up this folder and keep working through books you need to read and understand.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

I did the complete opposite: I threw away almost all my books, digital or physical. I now restrict myself to having two books I’m actively reading at a time, one fiction and one non-fiction. If I reach the final 15% of either one I allow myself to buy a new book, not before. This has massively increased the number of finished books.

I found having a Dropbox folder with hundreds of books to be both completely useless and paralyzing. I kept switching books, or i was unable to pick one due to too much choice and ended up just scrolling instagram or Reddit.

[wyclif]

It is true that for it to work you need to have enough discipline to not get distracted by the other books, sticking to one title until you finish it or at least extract the optimal value out of it.

[gperkins978]

Read the Mythical Man Month. If you have ever managed a software project, it will ring true and right like really good mythology. Write down pithy parts to steal for future slides in presentations to management.

[samstave]

Is that a sharable folder?

[jack_riminton]

I really like this viewpoint. I can understand more now why elderly people use the library so much (beyond the obvious technical divide).