My Information Stream

[coryhouse]

I believe it's critical to manicure your information stream to assure it's providing a high signal-to-noise ratio.

A valuable information stream:

• Is high signal: Consistently provides information that helps you achieve your goals
• Is low noise: Avoids providing information that's outside your realm of influence

“In ancient times, having power meant having access to data. Today, having power means knowing what to ignore. - Yuval Harari

My Goals

• I am currently focused on JavaScript, React, Node, and GraphQL. So my information stream reflects this focus.
• I've found improving my general life skills has dramatically improved my quality of life and my results. So I regularly consume useful content that's unrelated to programming, but broadens my knowledge. Topics include psychology, health, communication, persuasion, sales, management, lifestyle design, time management, mental models, and so on. I take my lessons in these areas and regularly consider how they apply to programming.

Social Media

I follow many developers on Twitter. I limit the time I spend reading tweets so I can focus my reading on the sources below. I don't use any other social media.

Email Newsletters

I'm a big believer in this format. The signal to noise ratio on these is high.

General

Farnham Street Brain Food Newsletter Seth Godin’s daily blog Tim Ferriss Mailing List

JavaScript

JavaScript Weekly Es.next News React.js Newsletter React Status O'Reilly Web Development Newsletter React Digest Kent C Dodds Mail 


Podcasts

General

The Knowledge Project  Tim Ferriss Show

JavaScript

The React Podcast JavaScript Jabber Syntax

Books

I use audible. I listen to about one book a month while driving and biking. I track my reads on GoodReads.

Video

I watch Pluralsight and Egghead courses. I believe in video-based learning, so I've authored multiple courses on Pluralsight.

I also enjoy Fun Fun Function on YouTube and TED Talks.

I hardly ever watch TV. I prefer reading, writing, experimenting, traveling, and hanging out with the fam.

Conferences

I enjoy speaking at conferences so I can get in and learn for free. 👍 Although I enjoy the "hallway track", I often attend sessions. Here's the list of conferences I've attended.

News

I don't watch/read general news. Here's why. The Four Hour Work Week also has good insights on this topic. If it's a big deal, it tends to come to my attention anyway via Twitter and word of mouth. I rarely visit general tech sites since my email stream has a higher signal to noise ratio for my interests, and conference sessions and conversations fill in the gaps.

Sports

I often watch my kids play sports. 😃 Not much else.

Music

I don't listen to the radio because the ads are obnoxious and I prefer to multithread my commuting. I strive to avoid ads. Instead, I listen to audio books and podcasts, and I pay for Spotify so there are no ads. I have a "Deep Focus" playlist for coding that contains music without lyrics.

[kolawoletech]

Loving this.

[mihailgaberov]

Very useful, filling the gaps in my list. Thanks for sharing!

[phanib]

Awesome list. Learned some new things.

[jasonkarns]

This is awesome! Luckily most of those email newsletters still publish RSS feeds so I can consume via feedly instead of polluting my inbox.

[hicks86]

This is a great! Btw is the Spotify "Deep focus" playlist public?

[coryhouse]

@hicks86 - Thanks! Yep, it's here. I just updated the post to include this link.