import Data.Time data DatabaseItem = DbString String | DbNumber Integer | DbDate UTCTime deriving (Eq, Ord, Show) theDatabase :: [DatabaseItem] theDatabase = [ DbDate (UTCTime (fromGregorian 1911 5 1) (secondsToDiffTime 34250)) , DbNumber 9001 , DbString "Hello, world!" , DbDate (UTCTime (fromGregorian 1921 5 1) (secondsToDiffTime 34123)) ] My question: I want to get the UTCTime. So, thisFunction :: [DatabaseItem] -> [UTCTime] I don't need the answer but more the intuition (a link to a youtube etc. is also possible) how to handle these types of situations. Because i keep trying to think in terms of key:values (Python,Julia) which doesn't seem the right paradigm to approach this. thanks in advance! best,