In my day job as a product guy, I spend my time juggling slack, email, jira, confluence and at least 30 browser tabs to try and make coherent sense of it all. Some topics demand deep dives, others don’t deserve a second glance. Outside of my day job I consume content from newsletters, twitter threads, books and articles on the web. Not to mention YouTube, Netflix, Disney, Prime . You get the idea.
But the volume of information out there is always overwhelming and you end up feeling jaded and not making progress. At work I am very conscious about my information diet, I am slowly beginning to apply the same principles outside work now.
I have 2 simple filters for going deep on any information
- Schedule Consumption
Do not consume content the moment you find it. Add a bit of distance between the act of discovery of a content and the act of consumption. At work this means going through your mailbox but not diving deep into any email. If you need to go deep then track it and block your time. Outside of work if you find an interesting article while browsing, bookmark it. If you find an interesting thread on twitter, favourite it. Then come back later to consume it. You can also use a ton of read it later apps like instapaper and pocket make it easier. This delayed gratification changes the game on consumption.
- Consume to Produce.
As a Product person, there is no shortage of information awaiting consumption. The simple heuristic I use to guide my filter one what to consume, is to only consume to produce. It is a very simple concept, you only consume stuff in a way that you are able to produce something as a result. You could produce new content, training manuals, podcast questions, videos etc. The medium of production doesn't matter as much as the intention to produce while consumption. Hold the bar for consumption very high.
If you have ever felt that you vaguely have an idea about the subject because you read about it somewhere but can‘t remember enough to contribute. You can still watching interesting videos on YouTube and documentaries on Netflix but don’t confuse it with learning.
