Ask HN: How do you know what to ignore?

When I was younger the choice was between doing "good" stuff and doing "bad" stuff and I learned to choose and enjoy the "good" stuff. As I've become older I've realised that I have to choose between "good" stuff and other "good" stuff. There's too much to do and experience to take every good option. Each good choice excludes something else.

How do you decide what to ignore? For example, on the front page of HN today are several really interesting articles on diverse topics (see below for some examples!). Reading each one of them would benefit me in some way. And that's just HN! There are one hundred or one thousand times as many interesting and educational new articles on the internet available for me to read. And that's just the internet! There are at least ten other ways I could be productively spending my time (e.g. offline reading, programming, sport, socialising, ...).

So how do you know what to ignore, or put another way, how do you prioritise? I admit my goal-setting has been a bit lax recently. If it had well-set goals would this become more clear to me? Or do you have another way of addressing this issue that I'm sure many of you face :)

Example stories

CEOs don't steer

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668572

What is a Bitcoin fork?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15667607

French institute suspects nuclear accident in Russia or Kazakhstan in September

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668202