I think that you need an actual goal to be effective. If it’s keeping yourself amused, a sorting algorithm is hardly necessary. If it’s keeping abreast of cutting-edge research in a few specific fields, it’s going to be very different than trying to learn the basics in a large number of diverse fields. It also depends heavily on if you’re working with a set amount of stuff to read or a set timeframe to read it in (I’m guessing the former). This is an interesting hypothetical problem, but it’s hard to specify a real solution without some idea of what type of efficiency you are trying to maximize.
That said, I heartily recommend bookmarking all of the websites you frequent and then putting all those bookmarks into a folder on your toolbar in Firefox; you can then simply right-click “open all in tabs” and have one window window with everything you want to read, and you can easily close anything without new or interesting content.
I’ve certainly used this to keep abreast of, say, webcomics. However, it has not helped me much in my professional life.
For me, developing heuristics for how to spend my time and energy in a valuable fashion seems to be best done in a piecemeal fashion, and requires constant effort.
I think that you need an actual goal to be effective. If it’s keeping yourself amused, a sorting algorithm is hardly necessary. If it’s keeping abreast of cutting-edge research in a few specific fields, it’s going to be very different than trying to learn the basics in a large number of diverse fields. It also depends heavily on if you’re working with a set amount of stuff to read or a set timeframe to read it in (I’m guessing the former). This is an interesting hypothetical problem, but it’s hard to specify a real solution without some idea of what type of efficiency you are trying to maximize.
That said, I heartily recommend bookmarking all of the websites you frequent and then putting all those bookmarks into a folder on your toolbar in Firefox; you can then simply right-click “open all in tabs” and have one window window with everything you want to read, and you can easily close anything without new or interesting content.
I’ve certainly used this to keep abreast of, say, webcomics. However, it has not helped me much in my professional life.
For me, developing heuristics for how to spend my time and energy in a valuable fashion seems to be best done in a piecemeal fashion, and requires constant effort.