Information Diet

We Are Not Data-centers

Posted November 16, 2012

I’m guilty of being information sucker, always wasting my time reading blogs, and surfing the internet for something I don’t know about. There is no problem in reading blogs, and surfing purposeless for little time. The problem is when it keeps you distracted. Filtering hundreds of blogs in your RSS reader, and tens of daily newsletter emails coming to the inbox. Notifications on your iPhone and on your Mac, and if you have iPad too, you’re kinda damned — All you need is one notification and three devices will make a party out of it.

CTC or Cut The Crap

Ask yourself, what do I really need? How to get best information without being overloaded with other crap? For me I always choose 1–3 maximum of things to follow under that same category. I know I will loose a lot of good information, but I’ll be left with the best, and all the crap will be cut off.

When in doubt, Save for later

Saving for later is awesome, because 90% of the time you will just delete what you’ve saved because it is irrelevant. It seems stupid at first — Why would you save it in the first place, because sometimes you come to something that appear awesome to you because your doing something boring or looking for excuse not to work. So if you stumble upon something important procrastinate distractions.

One Medium

Setup all your information to endup in the same place. It doesn’t matter if it is email, rss, or twitter as long as they all endup in the same place. This will destination will act as an inbox, so when you have free time you can just scroll without jumping applications.

Kill Notifications

Notifications are awesome when they are just used for couple of apps. Because most of the applications just abuse notifications with reminders to use the app, or do something for them, so unless there is a value, notifications will remain off. So for me only couple of applications are allowed to distract me.

Disappear from time to time

When things go tight, you can always disappear for couple of days, weeks, or even months. As long as it takes to be focused. Close your phone, notifications, or even close your internet — if your work doesn’t depend on it — and just go things that matter.

Originally published at seifsallam.com.