<story><title>My bad habit of hoarding information</title><url>https://andreisurugiu.com/blog/bad-habit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lo_zamoyski</author><text>FOMO is a sign of the vice of curiosity[0] and pride[1]. The rosier side of what you&amp;#x27;re doing is that you seem to have a means of at least managing the impulse. Still unfocused, still not perfect, but better than pointless chasing after information.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a way to break the habit is a kind of fasting and interruption: when you come across the temptation to indulge a distraction or archive that link, cut yourself off and remind yourself that all you&amp;#x27;re doing is dissipating your energies and working against your own good and understanding. Instead of nourishing your mind through sustained commitment, you are choosing to wallow in the shallows of the shoreline. To enter the depths, you must let go the shore. That&amp;#x27;s the decision you face here, and decisions are always a sacrificial act. You give up one thing for another.&lt;p&gt;[0] Curiosity here refers to a kind of &amp;quot;information gluttony&amp;#x2F;lust&amp;quot;, a kind of wandering eye. It&amp;#x27;s the same impulse that afflicts busybodies and gossips in that the desire to know has been unhinged from reason. You don&amp;#x27;t need to know most of that stuff and most of it is of little value to you.&lt;p&gt;[1] Pride because there&amp;#x27;s now way you can know everything, not in this life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dmreedy</author><text>I think there&amp;#x27;s a whole lot of truth in this, but I&amp;#x27;d also like to try to provide a complementary position, for the balance.&lt;p&gt;There is a kind of depth can come from focus, but this is a narrow kind of depth, one that can&amp;#x27;t question its own premises. It&amp;#x27;s directly analogous to the depth of a depth-first search, and has the same upsides and downsides. It&amp;#x27;s really handy when you know your target, and when you think your heuristics for having chosen that target are pretty good.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, I think you can look at this kind of broad-spectrum curiosity as a kind of breadth-first search, again, with the same strengths and weaknesses. It definitely takes longer, and it definitely can end up amounting to not much more than wallowing. But it can also serve very well when you&amp;#x27;re not sure what the target is, or if there even is one.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it can give access to more &lt;i&gt;possible&lt;/i&gt; models, more analogies, more metaphor, more understanding-by-comparison, which in turn grants a depth of its own kind, especially in conjunction with true narrow depth of exploration. Since all models are wrong, and each model explores different facets of an idea, having more models gives you a broader set of tools for taking a given concept and applying it to specific areas. They may not be useful in the given moment, but they may lead to unpredictable and insightful connections later on.&lt;p&gt;But of course, to your point, that all comes at the risk of never getting far enough along to apply anything in the first place. But I do believe there is a place for each. Feynman spinning plates in the cafeteria and all that.</text></comment>
<story><title>My bad habit of hoarding information</title><url>https://andreisurugiu.com/blog/bad-habit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lo_zamoyski</author><text>FOMO is a sign of the vice of curiosity[0] and pride[1]. The rosier side of what you&amp;#x27;re doing is that you seem to have a means of at least managing the impulse. Still unfocused, still not perfect, but better than pointless chasing after information.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a way to break the habit is a kind of fasting and interruption: when you come across the temptation to indulge a distraction or archive that link, cut yourself off and remind yourself that all you&amp;#x27;re doing is dissipating your energies and working against your own good and understanding. Instead of nourishing your mind through sustained commitment, you are choosing to wallow in the shallows of the shoreline. To enter the depths, you must let go the shore. That&amp;#x27;s the decision you face here, and decisions are always a sacrificial act. You give up one thing for another.&lt;p&gt;[0] Curiosity here refers to a kind of &amp;quot;information gluttony&amp;#x2F;lust&amp;quot;, a kind of wandering eye. It&amp;#x27;s the same impulse that afflicts busybodies and gossips in that the desire to know has been unhinged from reason. You don&amp;#x27;t need to know most of that stuff and most of it is of little value to you.&lt;p&gt;[1] Pride because there&amp;#x27;s now way you can know everything, not in this life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>abnry</author><text>This comment pulled me in and I&amp;#x27;ve reread it several times. Tere is a lot of truth here. I appreciate how information hoarding can be a sign of status seeking. More knowledge, more skill, more times being the person who just knows the answer. Fear (of missing out) is a classic symptom of status seeking.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that some degree of information hoarding has paid off for me. It sometimes really does improve your skill and impress your peers. Aside from fasting type interventions, what I think is needed in addition to this is some form of wisdom relating to knowing what is valuable to hoard, read, or study. It&amp;#x27;s like drinking alcohol. If you are getting drunk all the time it is probably a good idea to stop completely. But there are real benefits of social drinking.&lt;p&gt;This makes me convinced I need more skill in establishing and recognizing priorities when it comes to information gathering.</text></comment>