Ours is an era of information overload. A time when there is such a glut of information from all the infinity pools of our news feeds, that will we always run out of time before we run out of ‘new’. We have gone from a time when information was scarce and knowledge was power, to attention is scarce and curation is power.
So how do we ‘consume’ information, if at all? Should we all become hermits, avoid all new information and live under a rock? Or is there any merit in careful / constrained consumptions.
Here’s my take on it:
1) Reduce / restrict / reevaluate aimless information consumption. Delete any app on your phone that has an unlimited ‘feed’. (Variable reward of unpredictable new information = death of attention span and will power).
2) Don’t watch any news. It is ok to be blissfully unaware of 95% of what is happening around you. If it is really important, it will eventually reach you via your friends or your family or your colleagues. News nowadays optimises for outrage not insight.
Curate a set of trusted sources of information (say, a curated set of blogs, newsletters, Youtube channels, books, movies etc that you have collected over time because you trust the creator’s competence, authenticity, craft). Prioritise insight and depth over recency and urgency. Subscribe to their feeds and redirect them to a distraction-free, feed-free environment (e.g. get them delivered to your email).
3) Curate the above list with the best creators in your field(s) of interest. Go for the top of the shelf, i.e. top 3-5 in each field. Go deep on their content before expanding / replacing the list.
4) Consume from this curated list within a set time slot.
5) Collect interesting tidbits from these curated sources and organise them via Feynman’s ’12 questions’ approach. More on this in my next post.
Move from FOMO to JOMO (Joy of missing out).
👉 Don’t let information ‘happen’ to you. Seek out the knowledge that will help you move your life’s work forward, and train yourself to ignore the rest.