Thinking better despite information overload

The internet has given us almost unlimited and practically free access to all of the human knowledge in a way never before seen in history. We have built sophisticated tools over the years to filter through this information flooding and find the pieces that we are most interested in. Yet, we still feel overwhelmed by all of this.

We can seek out facts, read news and blogs, and tweets, and analyze complex problems. But most of us aren’t good at dealing with this information to learn new things. We want more deep thinkers, not information processors.

Like everything else, better thinking is a result of better mental models and practice. If you’re consistently working on improving your blind spots and biases, you can be very objective and rational in your decisions. And most often we don’t have to be smart or a genius to make better decisions. Like Charlie Munger said,

“…It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying, `It’s the strong swimmers who drown’.”

“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.”

Be a learning machine. Use the internet, go to a library, buy new books , browse Speckbit’s Collections and LEARN. Because it’s the best thing you can do for yourself.

Originally published at blog.speckbit.com.