I’ve been studying recently about the distributed nature of some types of databases. Whilst going through the reading material - I’m studying at university- there is a lot of referenced reading material, often being articles that articulate the topic under discussion. Perhaps articulate is a bit too weak, perhaps drill them to death is more appropriate. I’ve come across this phenomenon quite a lot during my studies – where you are given a lot of information to start with and then you are given much, much more supporting information. Enough frankly to drown in.

Its this supporting information that for me presents a bit of a problem/annoyance.

In most cases when studying a technical topic, you get loads of information that you need to process, much like a computer. You need to analyse, find similarities and join ideas together. This means that reading becomes more of a highly functional cognitive endeavour than just ‘hearing’ what the text has to say. Often, I find myself having to avoid reading supporting information because a) its too detailed in an already detailed process of trying to understand the generics. b) the information just takes far too long to assimilate. This is a timing issue. How do you read everything all the time and retain everything all the time – specifically to the detail that usually each one specialises in? I don’t like spending weeks studying the same thing but the material is always geared towards this.

In most cases, i feel that these supporting materials do more harm really – just my opinion. They are often books, topics and specialist areas in themselves and they can often clutter but more problematicly over load ones already strained cognitive system. Its simply wasteful in some respects.

I guess you need to use as much rope as you need to in these cases, using your own judgment. Using too much, is detrimental – using as much as you need and ignoring the rest, perhaps is the sensible approach,

Either way, sometimes you need to ignore information. Its interesting but i think that its fairly common to feel that completeness is a function of volume and if you dont read all the material, then you can’t understand it all. This is simply not true.

Do as much as you need to do.