Something that I have found useful when evaluating signals1 is how often I create Anki cards from them. Because Anki makes memory a choice, and I like to remember valuable things, if I make very few or no notes from a given signal it is probably not a valuable thing to be subscribed to (unless I am consciously reading something fun for pure entertainment). It is interesting that the mindfulness to think “should I make any notes” every time I read something helps prevents me from just mindlessly subscribing - no one sets out to waste time, but this added friction is a guardrail that helps me stay on task.

  1. E.g. newsletter subscriptions, RSS feeds, Slack channels, etc ↩