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How to Stay Sane in the Information Era: The Capture Habit
In a single day, the average American faces anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 ads, sends or receives 40 emails, looks at a screen for 7 hours, and listens to 1 hour and 39 minutes of radio.
These numbers alone should illustrate how foolish it is to juggle everything in your head.
I don’t pretend to know how much we can remember all of the information that floods our brains, let alone organize and apply it in relevant ways. But I know we’re not feeling well. And while some of us have made the enviable decision to live off-grid in a solar-powered yurt, that’s not an option for everyone. So what about the rest of us?
Now more than ever, I believe we need to cultivate the habits that actually fit the era in which we live.
Thankfully, you don’t have to start from scratch. Tiago Forte, productivity consultant and author of the book Building a Second Brain, has developed 10 indispensable principles for information management.
The “Second Brain” is exactly what it sounds like. You need a brain outside of your brain, a system for storing relevant information in ways that will support both productivity and creativity.
One principle Forte lays out is called “the capture habit.”
