Low Information Diet
Sunday, December 28, 2008

Continuing from my blog about the book The 4-Hour Workweek, we are going to turn to the topic of the Low Information Diet.

I've two views on this strategy - it's both appropriate and inappropriate - and I think you need to adopt an approach that suits your circumstances.

Funnily enough, I choose to adopt a low information diet when I had just started working at JP Morgan, my first career role. I was learning so much about technology hardware, software and processes that I didn't have the capacity to retain that learning whilst simultaneously consuming all the news published about what was happening in the world. I choose to ignore most of it with the exception of the Australian Financial Review as it contained information relevant to the industry I was operating in.

Whilst I've occasionally swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, I've found the 'selective ignorance' approach really is the best way to avoid information overload. By using the 'selective ignorance' approach, I can allocate time to reading on a specific topic (or book) and avoid distractions of switching between information viands.

Life hack articulates this succinctly in the blog Go on a High Information Diet. It's kind of a Pareto's law take on the issue: cut down on the stuff masquerading as information and focus on what is real information. Fair point.

Additionally, this article (along with a raft of others - just google "low information diet 4-hour work week") makes the point of social connectivity and the role 'information' plays in that dynamic.

To be fair to Tim on this topic, he was advocating the approach specifically with respects to managing email & contact for a business that should largely run itself whilst you spend your time focusing on something you'd rather be doing. Ergo, if you like being sociable, having a little grasp on what is going on in the world I'd suggest spending a little bit of time on the headline current events of the day.

I would have put an image from Gabe’s Guide to the e-Discovery Universe to sum up this point nicely, but blogger is playing up again... so the URL is: http://gabesguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/crackberry-bart.jpg

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posted by Lee Gale @ 5:54 PM,

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