Life is Short
"One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future."<p>Great advice. But I sometimes struggle with this as it requires a bit of forecasting (you need to put yourself in the 'future' mindset before deciding if you'll care -- this can be hard).<p>My heuristic is this. It works about 95 percent of the time.<p>Ask yourself: What motivated the person who made this?<p>If the answer is, simply, "anger" "money" "boss made me" "had to hit my quarterly numbers, or some similar reason, you're probably better off skipping it.<p>You want to look for the answers that are more genuine: "love" "practicing a craft" "desire to build something."<p>This generally helps me decide if something is worth putting in my brain (or my body). It helps me avoid M&Ms (junk food) and to guilt-free enjoy my mom's homemade cookies over the holidays. It helps me avoid clickbait and spend time reading quality essays.