I currently try to read long-form content that requires deep focus in the morning before work (30-45 mins depending on my day). Then during the day I have some breaks and read newsletters and other posts. Videos and podcasts are difficult for me to consume, as they are often a bit too padded with small talk and non-essential conversational information, but I sometimes listen to them when I work out or while I cook. I recently started taking notes when I read, I would like to extend this system into rewriting my synthesis in Obsidian or Notion.
However, despite all, I feel my reading list keeps growing and I'm always catching up with what happens in our field, but as if I'm always a few steps behind. There are many more articles and books that would make me better as a professional, but I simply don't have time to go through them. (Not to mention other topics I'd like to learn aside from my work, or simply read for pleasure.)
So my question is: how do you keep up? How do you stay up-to-date in your own profession?
And I mean it both in terms of your approach/methodology (e.g. when do you read and what, how do you retain information, what aids to reading/bookmarking do you use) but also in terms of the mental aspect/wellbeing (how much is "good enough" for you? How do you keep yourself from being overwhelmed? Do you feel energized by reading?).
This is entertainment. You can enjoy a random movie without watching the IMDB top 100 first. You can live without a deep understanding of the Afghan wars. You don't need to have an opinion on the latest AI trend.
My reading list is a wishlist. When I have time, I pick something interesting from it. I don't feel any obligation to finish it, or even to keep it from growing. It's an act of curation, not aggregation.
2. Most of the sources you've mentioned are push-based - i.e. someone else is pushing this new info onto you (newsletters, youtube, podcasts, news). This increases FOMO. Instead, try to implement a pull-based approach and only seek and read info that is relevant to what you want to learn, read. It's a lot harder than it seems, but my guess it's harder due to default.
Last year, I re-tried[1] the experiment of not using the internet for entertainment for a few months, only for work and life admin. To catch up with news, I subscribed to a paper-based weekly newspaper. If there is something important in the world, you will find out about it, someone will tell you. But this will help a ton with anxiety and mental health.
The other thing I realised - when I listen to podcast and go into info overload, I get burned out a lot quicker. Listening to podcasts while working is the worst. I removed all podcast subscriptions and only started adding those that I want to listen + limit when I listen to these episodes.
The only way I found out about a website I've come to use pretty much daily because it proved itself very useful to my job is though this method.
When I am in learning mode, I try to mix up a 'breadth first' approach with an occasional 'depth first' method.
Pick up enough tidbits of information about a few popular topics so you can have a half-way intelligent conversation about them. Dive into detail on just a few of them so you know more than the average person about those.
Don't worry that you can't do either of these approaches for every single topic possible.
Another practical tip is strengthening up you foundations. If you're interested in programming languages, once you learned the theory behind them, you'll find it's faster to learn new ones. Textbooks are great for this. This day, I don't care about most content, as there are few that are more than a sliver of insight.
You keep up like you and your brain always do - by focusing and prioritizing.
Your captain obvious)