🥑 Get on an “information diet“ to be even more effective developer!
Tags: codenewbie, productivity, motivation, dx
Published: 2020-01-22 21:52:51

## Introduction

2020 💥 People on the Internet create so much content every day that it's not possible to use it even in the next 100 years...

Did you feel when you read an article and/or watched a video from your favorite social feed and your brain was getting too much, but your memory **didn’t save** any of this?

> In other words, you literally can’t even say "_what this content was about?_" and "_why did you completely «eat it» now?_".

Yes, that's first bell to "_informational obesity_". The information received didn't bring anything useful, you just spent time and filled your brain with extra ballast.

Today we will deal with it! 😎

## Diet, not a complete rejection of information!

These rules will help you separate _useful_ information from _harmful_. Before you start reading a new article or watching a video or listening a podcast, try to follow these sequence:

### 1 → Ask _stop_ questions

✅ Why I need this now?
✅ How it helps me now?

### 2 → Understand author motivation

✅ Is this content is just _Ad_ without any other motivation?

### 3 → Search for helpers

✅ TL;DR or Introduction section (text content);
✅ Time code for jump to needed section (video/audio content);
✅ Code snippets or links to repository (code content);
✅ Quick preview for all pictures (graphical content);

![workout](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/n519ahrui79im9yg1u1c.jpg)

## What if a newbie friend asks for advice (some recent real life example)?

Quick answer is: apply rules above _not only_ for yourself, but also for the people around you and do **not** feed them _harmful_ to their brain!

> ❗️ And I tell you full example, because it's important to understand.

A few days ago, my friend asked me:

— _I want to learn HTML, CSS and JS for build my first website [...] before I start googling, maybe you give me good point where to start?_

And it's **serious** question, because this topics are very common on the Internet and have huge dose of _harmful_ information.

> Almost every second wants to talk about their knowledge and sell their courses... unfortunately, not always of good quality and revealing the topiс! 🤷‍♂️

Realizing this (_and because my friend is not indifferent to me_), I advised him to start from the **very beginning** — read [W3C Standards](https://www.w3.org/standards/) and do small exercises with learned material. 

Next, gradually increase the sources of information: 

1. Eric A. Meyer's [Grid Layout in CSS](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920041696.do) book;
2. Lea Verou's [CSS Secrets](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920031123.do) book;
3. Heydon Pickering's [Inclusive Components](https://inclusive-components.design) blog;
4. JS Community's [The Modern JavaScript Tutorial](https://javascript.info/);

And so on and so forth... I immediately put my friend on an _informational diet_ with _extremely delicious_ mind food! 🥑  

## Final words

🎁 While you're _hungry_ — you're able to **learn** information without achieving _informational obesity_! Remember it.

## Photos by

[Title] NordWood Themes https://unsplash.com/photos/nqPe1juwcdQ
[1] Annie Spratt https://unsplash.com/photos/XMpXzzWrJ6g

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[gowebly_url]: https://github.com/gowebly
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[csv2api_url]: https://github.com/koddr/csv2api
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