(maybe) the key is to have one or two definite projects in-progress, and ever at the forefront of your mind (or near the forefront, within the forefront's reach), so that whatever else you encounter is sifted through the prism of those projects, so that the rush of incoming data can be quickly bent to productive design. thus there persists a steady note of relevance, the random and useless suddenly become affected by an afternote of possibly-useful, possibly-relevant.

and so in your scraping-over, your running-through, there's a Something perched behind you, digesting, transforming--