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Discussion on: The New Years Resolution That Changed My Career

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ryansmith profile image
Ryan Smith

That is a good one, I think we are in the "age of skimming" where people obtain information through titles and descriptions rather than reading the content in its entirety. I think the sheer amount of information available online can be overwhelming. Instead of going in-depth on one thing, we skim a variety of things to make sure we get it all. There is also the reason of "I don't have time" that we all tell ourselves, but articles usually take around five minutes to read (or have an "X minute read" indicator). I know I have that time to spare and I'm sure others do as well, we just need to focus our efforts a little more.

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

That is a good one, I think we are in the "age of skimming"

I literally read the first line of this post and scrolled down to the comments.

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pavelloz profile image
Paweł Kowalski

Another one is "multitasking" to save time. I hate this so much... the number of times i had to repeat myself, over and over, because people on video call are doing something "in the background" made me skip 99% of meetings altogether - its just pure waste of time.

Anyone who thinks he/she is good at multitasking is just plain wrong. Do one thing, but do it good, instead of doing 3 things badly.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Yep, and I think there's a lot of value in skimming, or even just keeping plugged into the headlines.

For example, if you're floating around JavaScript land, you can kind of pay attention to the headlines and see some trends relating to TypeScript, maybe Svelte, React Hooks, etc. There's value in staying tuned into the headlines, but if you don't have the discipline to go in depth as well, you really don't know much of anything at the end of the day.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

@ben there should be a serenity prayer for skimming vs really reading

God, grant me
Serenity to set aside the things that are not valuable to me right now,
Courage to deeply read what I had intended to read,
And wisdom to keep those two activities separate.

(personally I'm still struggling)