More than ever, millions of people are too distracted to notice the most important knowledge they need to lead fulfilling and successful lives.
Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter and Medium once said:
“The information we consume matters just as much as the food we put in our body. It affects our thinking, our behaviour, how we understand our place in the world. And how we understand others.”
Right now, somewhere online is post, an article, a book summary, or book that can change your worldview, perception, mental model or even your life forever if you read it.
In the age of information overload, it takes more than skim reading to notice life-changing knowledge.
The knowledge you’ve been looking for to lead a happy, fulfilling, meaningful and successful life is probably hidden in a book you are ignoring or that post you don’t want to read because it’s too long.
The ability to find practical life and career resources online in our era of information overload is one of the most important skills you can master today.
Herbert A. Simon, an economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist rightly said that:
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
What we are missing today is how to better allocate our limited time to find factual, practical and useful knowledge to make informed decisions and choices about our lives and careers.
Warren Buffett read The Intelligent Investor when he was 19. This book became the core of the investment philosophy Buffett would use throughout his career. Today, he is one of the richest men on the planet.
When asked how he learned about rockets, Elon Musk, the billionaire and brilliant mind behind Tesla and SpaceX reportedly said, “I read books.” His voracious reading habit was essential to launching his history-making career.
“Musk had spent months studying the aerospace industry and the physics behind it. From Cantrell and others, he’d borrowed Rocket Propulsion Elements, Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, and Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion, along with several more seminal texts,” writes Ahslee Vance in Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future.
If you are serious about upgrading your life and career, invest in the right kind of knowledge and proactively ignore everything the media is constantly throwing at you.
“Given the power of breakthrough knowledge and the difficulty of finding it, one of the most fundamental questions we all need ask ourselves is: How do we use the limited time we have to find breakthrough knowledge in a sea of distraction?” writes Michael Simmons.
We live in an age of infinite scrolling and endless interruptions. We get blasted with irrelevant information every morning from all sources. It’s dumped on us by the truckload every morning.
There’s just too much information to process these days.
With the current 24/7 news cycle, unlimited access to every advice, expert opinion, and unlimited options for where, when, how to access it, information overload is pretty much inescapable.
“The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention,” Nicholas Carr explains in his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
But you can control that by unplugging from sources that add little or no value to your life. You don’t have to read every article, tweet, email, the endless stream of interesting articles on Facebook or watch those viral videos and the numerous phone photos on Instagram or Snapchat.
All of this is more information than the brain is configured to handle. At every moment of every day, our brains are taking in an incredible amount of information we don’t need.
“Too Much Information” that, “Information overload is one of the biggest irritations in modern life”, writes Schumpeter of The Economist.
If you don’t master how to filter the distraction from the useful knowledge, you will waste half your time everyday on information you really don’t need.
Create your own personal filters to find useful and relevant knowledge
Better and practical knowledge can empower you to make better choices and informed decisions.
Rather than read every news story because of the fear of missing out, seek out timeless and relevant information that can help you now and tomorrow.
Slow your information consumption cycle by choosing a trusted source and signing up for their newsletter.
“Rather than get caught up in the “breaking” part of news where facts are more uncertain, slow news is the idea of a longer news cycle that focuses more on fact-checking and careful reporting than being first to report on a story” says Jory MacKay of RescueTime.
Unless you’re willing to be radical about what gets your attention, you will continue to waste a lot of time scrolling unnecessary information.
Taking back control is the only way to really control irrelevant information overload. Find ways to feel more in control. “The Internet never says, ‘You’ve had enough, now go away,’” says Hooked author, Nir Eyal. And that’s the case for any information source.
To maximize your brain every day, use better tools and settings to filter information throughout the day. Be proactive about how you consume media. Train your brain to ignore unnecessary information.
When you organize your day with these principles in mind, you will likely increase your brain’s efficiency significantly.
If you don’t unplug from everything that wants your attention, turn down the firehose, and find the sources that mean the most to you and work, you will continue to waste your precious time and attention.
Remove options you don’t need, it’s liberating. Choose what you consume consciously — with the health of your brain and body in mind.
As Zig Ziglar has said, “Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.”
The best learners, peak performers and successful people in the world proactively seek timeless information and knowledge they can use now and tomorrow to keep moving forward. Only seek information or knowledge that empowers you to achieve your goals and to live your life to the fullest.
If you start reading only relevant information, with the intention of really learning deep and useful things, you will notice the difference in your approach to thinking, working, and making life-changing decisions.
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This post was previously published on Personal Growth and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Matt Chinworth