The Lifelong Learner :: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::

We are constantly being overloaded with information. It seems like we live in an Information Overload age. In any day, I receive more than a dozen emails, subscribe to over 50 rss feeds, read several daily news, read other less-frequent periodicals, and read other material. Isn’t that too much? I think so. It takes time to do all of that. Plus, a lot of it is not really that useful.

I have been changing a lot of my habits in this area lately. My desire is to be more productive and not be overloaded with information. Reading blogs like lifehack.org really helps – they’re loaded with good information. Other books, 4-hour workweek also had some good points in this regard. But it all comes down to “Information Diet” – having the discipline to cut the not-needed material.

In this article, Eight Tips to Find Your Information Oasis, which appeared on lifehack.org, the author gives 8 excellent tips on how to go on such an information diet. I am already doing a lot of them and I’m trying to get into a habit of doing most.

An information oasis – where you can get only the gems of the information without the noise – is the dream land of Information Age. It is the place where the information you consume boost your personal effectiveness rather than decrease it.

But how do you get there? How can you find your information oasis in the midst of information desert? Here are eight tips:

1. Minimize your news consumption

News is probably the most noisy kind of information you could get. The reason is simple: 99% of what you read in the news today would not make it to the history 100 years from now. That implies that 99% of what you read in the news is actually not that important. There are simply too many details than you need. Reading the headlines is more than enough in most situations.

2. Read history in place of news

Rather than reading news, I believe it’s a good idea to read another kind of information which has much less noise: history. History has filtered 99% or more of the unimportant details to give you only the important. Furthermore, history also allows you to see the contexts of the events that happened.

Why is it important? Because contexts allows you to find patterns which in turn give you invaluable lessons of what to do and what not to do. Why should you repeat the same mistakes made by others throughout the history if you can just avoid it in the first place? News, on the other hand, gives you just details without contexts. You may read hundreds of pages of news without ever capturing the big picture.

3. Unsubscribe the feeds and magazines which are not essential

To find your information oasis, it’s important to reduce your information intake. Besides minimizing your news consumption, you should also unsubscribe the feeds and magazines which are not essential. Check your magazine and feed subscriptions, and assess the value you get from each. Is it really worth your time? Does it help you do the important? Or maybe it actually distract you away from the important?

4. Read quotes from the great thinkers

I love quotes because they are the kind of information that has the highest density of wisdom. In the same amount of time, you can get much more insights by reading quotes than by reading other kinds of information. Just go to quote sites like ThinkExist or BrainyQuote, browse the quotes by topics or authors, and internalize what you read there. This is among the purest kinds of information you could get.

5. For each reading, read no more than what is necessary

It is an important key to effective reading. Why should you let all the noise get into your mind if you can just get the gems? So whenever you read something, just read what is necessary and no more. That’s why it’s important to have a clear purpose before you read, especially for readings which require longer time commitments like books. Clear purpose helps you distinguish the necessary from the rest.

6. While reading, focus on getting actionable ideas

Another key to effective reading is focusing on getting actionable ideas. Actionable ideas are ideas you can act upon to improve your life. If it’s not actionable, the information might just take up space in your memory without doing anything useful for you. In other words, it might actually be noise.

7. Check your email no more than twice per day

Email is one of the main sources of information noise in the Internet Age. If you check your inbox again and again during your day, not only it introduces a lot of noise into your brain, it also distracts you from actually doing the important. It’s better if you allocate certain periods of time (at most two) during the day to deal with it so that the noise is isolated and the distractions are minimized.

8. Ruthlessly stop consuming information whenever the value you get is no longer worth it

Whenever you consume information, don’t forget that diminishing returns applies. Over time, the value you get from consuming the information is decreasing. Eventually it will reach a point where you can get more value by doing other activities than by consuming the information. To minimize noise, you should ruthlessly stop at this point. More than that and you are introducing noise into your life.

ReferenceEight Tips to Find Your Information Oasis, Donald Latumahina, posted on lifehack.org