[blakethorne]

"One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future."

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).

My heuristic is this. It works about 95 percent of the time.

Ask yourself: What motivated the person who made this?

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.

You want to look for the answers that are more genuine: "love" "practicing a craft" "desire to build something."

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.