Monday, February 13, 2012

Action 022 - Choose Better Over More.

Like most of us, I'm suffering from information overload. I simply hear and see and read way too much about way too many things. And the information comes in so quickly that I feel I barely capture the highlights of any of it. I just don't know much about anything in any depth. I guess it's safe to say that I know very little about a lot more things than I used to.

I have always had a head full of useless trivia. But there was a time when that was balanced by in-depth knowledge of most current significant news items. These days, not so much. I need to change that. I need to value quality over quantity when it comes to information. Sure, it's amusing to know that Adele's "21" just passed the "Titanic" Soundtrack and will soon beat Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard" Soundtrack for album with most nonconsecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Soundtrack, but does it really make me any smarter?

And one glance at my social media and news icons helps explain what is happening. I am simply overwhelmed with new info.



It's the right time for Action 022- Choose Better Over More. Instead of reading everything that pops up as a notification on my iPad, I need to pick and choose the topics that hold true relevance for me. Right now, Currently, my Google News Reader Feed is overwhelmed with celebrity gossip, ginned up political outrages and the rantings of talking heads and pundits. I am going to start by paring those down and focusing, instead, on more significant pieces from sites like Longform. I will forgo a million updates and read fewer articles, but those articles will present me with more information, more citations, more explanations... more of everything worth knowing.

Choosing better over more will make me both. Not bad, right?

 

(And yes, I do appreciate that I am using a short-form app like WordPress to write this, and when finished, I will publish it with a link to the King of all Social Sites, Facebook. But it's just a piece of a much bigger project, and I share it to keep myself accountable and, perhaps, to help inspire someone else along the way.)

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