The marvels of modern technology allow me access to information in any place at any time. About two months ago I realized that I was spending almost 3 hours of my day reading through newspapers, blog posts and other internet news sites. I am an information junkie. I had never stopped to think about why I need all of this information and how any of it could really help me.
I operated under the assumption that the more information I consumed, the better - at somepoint, somewhere, that information could/would be useful. After reading my new favorite book “The Four Hour Workweek” I very quickly realized how much time I was wasting. Reading every word of every article that comes across my radar is not only unproductive but some of the most important pieces of information are easily forgotten in the process.
How do you re-evaluate your information diet? Easy, read the tagline / headline and ask yourself some very important questions:
- Is this piece of information going to tangibly help me today/tomorrow/this week
- Is this piece of information something that I am actually interested in and care about
For example, I was reading every single article about the Satyam debacle in the ET everyday. As general purpose cocktail knowledge it is good to know what is going on in the world, but EVERY article is overkill. What I needed was the one article that gives the daily overview of what is happening (in fact, typically you can get this from the headlines themselves). Also, through the headlines you can then find specific articles that you can focus on . . . for example I have worked with a certain audit company in the past and would like to know what the public perception / regulatory fallout is of this debacle. Just by asking myself the above questions I was able to cut my “time spent on Satyam” to 1/8 of what it was before . . . . .
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