On Improving Your Information Flow
Advice on consuming information better
Originally posted here.
The internet gives us access to far greater sources of information than most people realize. Many of the smartest and most knowledgeable people in the world freely share their thoughts and ideas online, but very few of us read what they have to say. Most of us either don’t consume much information at all, or consume much lower quality content than we could.
Similar to a social graph which illustrates all the social connections we have, we have an information graph that represents all the sources online that feed us new content. The process by which we consume information from our information graph is what I call information flow.
Given the quality of content that’s available online, it’s worth systematically developing a good information graph and information flow. Here are some tips from my experience on doing so:
Create a separate email exclusively for your information flow. This helps you keep important business or personal emails from being lost in your inbox. It also helps mitigate distractions while you’re working.
Build a strong foundation. Ignore most popular sites. The best sources of information are far better than the average and often aren’t well known. Yet they’re gold mines. I recommend LessWrong and Marginal Revolution to start.
Spread out from your foundation. Follow high-quality information aggregators like Arts and Letters Daily and The Browser. Click on the links in the articles that you read. Follow anything that looks interesting. Good sources follow good sources — check out whatever blogs your current sources recommend.
Subscribe to sources liberally but have a high bar for quality. If I find a new source, I’ll often look at the titles of their last few articles and possibly skim a couple to see if it seems valuable. If it does, I’ll subscribe. It’s much better to ignore content in your inbox than to not see it at all. If a source turns out to be low value, you can always unsubscribe later.
Read a lot.
Read widely. Follow sources on a variety of topics. Find everything interesting and explore your curiosity.
Skim, skip, and stop reading ruthlessly. Patrick Collison points out that you should always be reading the best marginal book you know of. The point generalizes to any information source. You should always be reading the best blog post or listening to the best podcast that you know of. Don’t feel like you have to finish each piece you read or that you need to understand every point to move on. At the same time, recognize when it’s worth slowing down to fully process something.
Be intellectually fearless. Don’t be afraid of not understanding an academic paper or technical source outside of your domain of expertise. Be willing to try and fail — you’ll still come out far ahead.
I’ve lost track of all the sources I follow, but here are a few of my favorites.
Edge (kind of dead now but still a good reservoir of content)
Concisely, the foundation of good information flow is to read more, better, and wider. The benefits of doing so can’t be overstated. And with the knowledge of 5,000 years of civilization to learn, there’s no time to waste.
Dive in.