On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 12:56 PM Bharat Shetty <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is a question that has been bothering me. Ever since I learned > how to use the internet, the huge corpora of information out there in > the form of blogs, articles, journals in addition to countless books > keeps me wondering about the vast infinite knowledge out there to be > dissected. I have learned to cull various useless sources mostly > popular social media such as Twitter, Facebook (deleted account) etc. > > Given this, I'm curious, how do you guys process non-technical > information or information not related to your work, research outside > of your work hours ? > Take my advice with a pinch of salt. Having too much media to consume is something that I still struggle with (my bedside table of books I want to read is overflowing, I have ~40 unlistened to podcast episodes on my phone, I have 30+ unread long form articles that I sent to my Kindle to read later at my leisure). 1. You don't have to subscribe to every blog, journal, subreddit, newspaper, etc. Subscribe to a handful of interesting re-bloggers/sources like Kottke, bOingbOing, MeFi and you will know most of what's happening with the world. 2. Don't be a complete-ist. You don't have to read everything from your favorite sources. Read a day or two's worth of posts from your sources. Anything older than that is probably no longer relevant. 3. Learn to skim. A big portion of posts even from your favorite sources are likely posts that would be without value if you were to look at it a year from now. Learn the art of reading the truly important and skimming or ignoring the rest. 4. Unplug your Cable TV. 5. Unplug from the Internet every once in a while. Going for a walk, go hike in a forest, go camp by a river side. Do it often (every couple of weeks). For consumed Information to become Knowledge and eventually Wisdom, it needs to be digested. You cannot digest if you keep consuming more Information. 6. You don't have to know that something has happened the instant it happened. If important stuff is happening in the world, you will become aware of it eventually and it would not matter that you heard about it within minutes or days of the event. 7. Try this experiment: Completely cut off from your Email and Social Media and News sources for a week or a month. Does life still go on? Did you really miss much? 8. It is far more important to be a kind, gentle, humane, mindful person than a person who knows the most facts. Thaths
