How to Stay Informed Without Being Overwhelmed
There's a lot to read out there--and some of it is true. Use these rules to organize your reading and expand your knowledge. It can help your business.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
We're drowning in dreck, and we all know it, but no one knows
quite what to do about it. Today what you read or hear and believe to be the
God's honest truth will just as likely turn out to be fiction; and those things
that you found to be inconceivable and clearly imagined or made-up will emerge
as gospel. No one knows who or what to trust these days and, sadly, this will
be the Orange Monster's everlasting and most pervasive legacy: the destruction
of trust in our country. Not simply in politics and other institutions, but in
ourselves and each other. A sorely deluded time where the stupid are sure and
the intelligent are full of doubt. Sadly, passion these days seems to be
inversely correlated to the availability of real facts.
But I'm not talking simply about the civic cesspool that we call
politics. What I'm talking about is the incessant, completely overwhelming, and
utterly unavoidable flow of "stuff" -- I'm reluctant to call it
information or data -- that barrages us daily from a million different
directions. Everything today is about speed. The media machines that succeed
are increasingly dominated by two concerns: how quickly can I get something out
and how compactly can I tell the story. Accuracy and analysis are secondary
considerations at best. The goal is grabbing your attention by means of a big,
continual and indiscriminate data dump in the hope of finding what sticks and
swiftly spreads. But more data isn't necessarily better or more instructive
information.
Rather, most of the material we're being subjected to today is
consciously designed to be raucous, interruptive, and to elicit strong
irrational emotions, negative reactions, and triggered responses. This is a
world of outrage and inflammation rather than illumination. One focused
principally on corruption, conflict, contests, and failures. Noise
shouted loudly and often enough doesn't always fall on deaf ears. It's Steve
Bannon flooding the zone with feces - - sewage on steroids. Close to half the
country believes, to some extent, most of the crap he and his collaborators put
out every day.04:51
Considering that sucking you in and selling slices of your
attention to advertisers is the entire raison d'etre of the social media
platforms and most of the major media sites, the available remedies for
stemming the deluge are quite limited. You can mute a bunch of words on
Twitter, you can block creeps and trolls on Meta, you can unsubscribe to the
dozens of sites you never signed up, or you can go really hardcore and try to
turn the whole slop stream off.
As millions of people have already done, you can just stop
looking and listening if you've got the discipline. Reuters Institute reports
that about 40% of Americans try from
time to time to avoid the online news entirely. You can also
pretty much forget daily print newspapers. They make great weights for
doggy bags tossed to your front door, but they're typically a day late and a
few dollars short. In rare instances, a great syndicated columnist will provide
some real insight and analysis, but even that content is generally available
elsewhere in multiple digital formats. However, the only thing worse for our
country than an ill-informed and mercilessly manipulated population is one that
is largely ignorant of what's happening all around us.
So, sticking your head in the sand or trying to shut out the
whole mess of non-stop noise and clutter isn't a smart solution. A better plan
is to develop a strategy to manage the stream, sharpen and limit your exposure
to the junk, and try to stay reasonably informed and up-to-speed on those
matters that are critical to your business, your family, and your life. The
trick is to take the abundant information -- add context and value to it-- and
turn it, hopefully, into knowledge and wisdom. To do that effectively takes
time, some patience, and a thoughtful and focused effort.
Notwithstanding that, as a columnist myself, I'm right in there
along with thousands of others fighting for attention and influence, I've still
developed a couple of strategies and approaches that have helped me try to stay
alert, reasonably informed, and slightly above the deluge.
Keep in mind that the whole process is worthless and empty if
you're too frazzled and FOMO-ed as you try to keep up that you're actually missing
the content, the necessary context, and the joy of learning that's supposed to
be one of the central incentives. Try doing less, better, and you'll come out
way ahead. Being a mile wide and an inch deep is a waste of what little time,
attention, and energy you have and -- while it might make for impressive
"nuggets" and "factoids" to drop into cocktail
conversations -- you'll have said and learned a lot about nothing.
The three most important concepts are focus, filter, and flow.
Focus: What's most important
to you, your business and your family? And I'd add, to your health,
wealth and happiness. I'm sorry to report that you can't really afford to worry
about the whole world. Be smart, be selective, and be a little selfish with your
time and your attention. Your family will thank you.
Filter: What five or six
trusted sources can give you accurate (discounted for their respective agendas
and political leanings), timely, and relatively objective information which you
can then analyze, evaluate, and apply? I've made a compilation in five
different "channels" of what, for me, are the best of breed. A mix of
media and voices across the political spectrum (except the frauds at Fox) is
definitely important. I select and occasionally rotate from these categories:
(1) daily publications, (2) weekly and monthly magazines, (3) selected podcasts
and newsletters, (4) individual blogs, and, wait for it, (5) actual non-fiction
books by writers I respect for deeper background and analysis in new areas.
Flow: How can you carve out
some uninterrupted and substantial parts of your day to shut out the world,
turn off your devices, and focus attention on the selected information so that
you're actually absorbing and retaining it? This isn't simple, but I'm seeing
more and more efforts by smart operators to ensure that they're the ones
running their days and lives rather than their bosses, peers, phones and
inboxes, or anyone else.
We make time for what's really important to us and what we are
interested in - what you pay attention to says everything about where you're
headed, why you're doing what you're doing, and how likely you are to be
pleased when you get there.