Tell HN: Drowning in information but still missing everything

12 points by akhil08agrawal 116 days ago | 10 comments

I need to vent. I'm a Senior PM and genuinely don't know how anyone stays on top of everything anymore. My morning routine has become a 2-hour anxiety spiral:

- Check Slack for overnight fires - Skim 200+ unread messages - Open Twitter to see what's happening in my space - Check if competitors launched anything - Glance at 3 newsletters I subscribed to and never actually read - Scroll LinkedIn because apparently that's where industry news lives now - Check Product Hunt because what if something relevant launched - Peek at HackerNews for tech trends

And after all that? I still missed that our competitor launched a major feature. Found out from a SALES CALL. Two weeks late. The worst part is the anxiety. I subscribe to 12 newsletters. I skim maybe 2. I read 0 thoroughly. But I can't unsubscribe because what if I miss something important? I've tried everything:

- RSS readers (dead) - Saved folders (never check them) - ChatGPT for research (doesn't know my context, gives generic answers) - Zapier automations (broke after 2 weeks) - Just "accepting I'll miss things" (the anxiety won)

My evening doomscroll is half "staying current" and half anxiety management. My partner thinks I'm addicted to my phone. Maybe I am. But it's not entertainment—it's fear of being the PM who missed the signal everyone else saw. I spend more time GATHERING information than actually THINKING about what to build. Anyone else feel this way? Or have I just lost the plot?

pmdulaney 115 days ago |

I would say, seriously, find a new job. It is demeaning to a human being to be in the position you find yourself, especially if there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

But if leaving this job is not a viable option at this time, I would say: Take advantage of your innate strength as a human being, which is to say, intuitive thinking. You're never going to match a machine when it comes to quantitative analysis of huge bodies of data.

gnatman 115 days ago |

Are you sure it’s necessary to know about competitor moves the instant they happen? I’m a salesman not a PM but I don’t feel the least bit embarrassed about hearing of a competitor feature from a customer. In fact now I have an opportunity to ask them questions about their need.

treetalker 115 days ago |

One approach I'm finding useful is to deal with discrete projects/responsibilities/topics in regular time blocks, and within each, use a limited part of the time to "adapt to changing circumstances": emails, news, changes in legal rules (I'm a lawyer), etc. That keeps my focus on building/creating, not just reacting.

Some changes must be taken into account. Some resolve themselves over time. Others don't matter.

It's also helpful to make a list of "all" possible inputs/tasks/focuses of attention — then, out of every 5, select 1. And out of those, select one of every five. That gives you (roughly) the top 4% of important things.

I also read something on HN today that resonated [1]: "you can only ever actually be doing one thing" so pick anything that "would be worthwhile to do right now, without any expectation that you know what might be 'best'", do it, and repeat.

FOMO is a b####, but virtually everything is unimportant. And with respect to important things, consider the unimaginable vastness of the universe and how trivial even the most important things are in comparison.

[1]: previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253882

haute_cuisine 115 days ago |

There were some popular SaaS products doing aggregation form multiple sources (email newsletters, websites, rss feeds) into a daily morning email. One had the word "brew" in the domain.

I believe founders closed their service and started a new one based on AI (some yers ago).

It wound be nice to have such tool that can sort through communication and highlight important action items, I want this, but I want this to go further: I define my goals and priorities and it acts as personal assistant with preparing weakly goals, daily action items, managing my todo lists, outsourcing some part of my todo list, etc.

The important part is I can't just hook up some random saas into all my business communication.

thunderfork 115 days ago |

How much of these signals actually matter? If the only reason "accept you'll miss things" didn't work was "anxiety", you need Zoloft, not Notion.

raianpollock 110 days ago |

with the notification part of the problem, maybe ThreadPatrol helps: thread-patrol.com

bluecheese452 115 days ago |

You have lost the plot. Get off your phone for a week.

mercurialsolo 116 days ago |

The slop is everywhere

akhil08agrawal 116 days ago | |

Yeah. But this is not about the slop. This is more about the fact that I need to be everywhere, at all platforms, but really can't.

And really need a solution for that.

capiki 114 days ago | | |

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