# When engaging with a large amount of resources during a literature review, how do you prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed?

I was originally going to email Gwern directly, but figured being in a public space would benefit others who have the same questions and also put more eyes on it.
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BLUF: I'm writing to you with a question and asking for advice in doing research better. When you're engaging with an overwhelming amount of resources how do you 1. prevent information overwhelm while 2. keeping a high fidelity understanding of your resources to be able to use them in a larger body of work?

After reading your Spaced Repetition post, many of your LW comments, subreddit posts, etc. I'm always excited with how you synthesize the number of links and breadth of resources you reference, which makes me think you've got some sorcery going on in working with large bodies of work. I've gone through your site and subreddit to see if you've posted on it previously, but most didn't directly stand out to answer this question (though I may have missed it) which is why I'm reaching out.

During my last lit review I stumbled upon a technique of using a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qkKmVs31QmVG1jFUMX8y_6hclYOdn2br7o0SI_m-U10/edit?usp=sharing)  to 1. log the paper's details, link, etc. and 2. (most importantly) **sort papers by which of the related works sections the resource ended up fitting into**. (Note: the "updated" methodology approach starts at line 18 and features multiple "headers" which are the Related Works sections to be filed under. *I apologize in advance for the quality.*) This dramatically helped, since I could file the info away and go back to processing rather than trying to hold it all in at any given moment. And to improve this approach for next time, I would add notes recording how specifically the paper fits into that section for future me. (Link to paper with resulting RW section if curious: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02472.)

This spreadsheet implementation isn't pretty, but I include it because it seems that even with an ugly implementation this helped out quite a bit and thus must hold some promise. 

I'm excited to get better at research in general though I'm interested in this aspect right now because I've just received a grant to do a survey (read: many more references to keep track of) for a cryptography paper (a field I'm new to) and I've seen that my previous method works *better*, but am not confident in its ability to scale.

My current best guess to handle this (inevitable?) information overload is to essentially:
- be exposed to lots of resources
- start to get overwhelmed (realize this feeling)
- get everything out of my head with a brain dump
- basically perform a "Principal Component Analysis" on said brain dump
	- (as in, "Ok. I'm working on the Related Works section. I just read paper X and that fits into the A bucket, I'll make a header and put it there. Paper Y fits into buckets B and C. I'm kind of confused about what exactly paper Z is doing, I need to note my best guesses of what my confusions are and come back to it." *etc.*)
- and afterwards I'm left with a result of an organized list of all my current resources and concrete items that list where I'm confused.

But when I read this I think, "can that really be it? That seems WAY too simple to be effective at scale."

On the other hand, I could see this simple trick being effective. Taking a look at your note on [decluttering](https://gwern.net/note/note#decluttering) makes me think that this brain dump > PCA > organized lists may actually be the right direction. (There's a further rabbit hole exploring the Latent Inhibition concept. How it's "thought to prevent information overload", yet how "those of above average intelligence are thought to be capable of processing this stream effectively"; there must be transferable techniques they employ to handle this info.) I'm also reminded of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" who's aim is to reduce information overwhelm and process boils down to **1. Capture 2. Clarify 3. Organize** 4. Review 5. Engage. (See also a paper investigating the cognitive science behind the methodology: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/GTD-cognition.pdf).

This also matches your outline mention: "Instead, I occasionally compile outlines of articles from comments on LW/Reddit/IRC, keep editing them with stuff as I remember them, search for relevant parts, allow little thoughts to bubble up while meditating, and pay attention to when I am irritated at people being wrong or annoyed that a particular topic hasn’t been written down yet." -[source](https://gwern.net/about#information-organizing)



I'd love to hear your thoughts on this approach and any alternative systems you'd recommend. Specifically: How do you remain open and receptive to a wide stream of information without becoming overwhelmed, while also being able to retain pertinent pieces of information for use in your works?

Also, I'm electing to share a higher volume of info in the spirit of [asking questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html), apologies for the wall of text.

Thanks for all you do! Well wishes to you,