We're all navigators in an ocean of information

Till the late 90s, information was a scarce resource. It was a resource sought after but not widely available. It was valued and respected. Access was difficult and sometimes required tremendous commitment to gain. Scholars would travel hundreds of kilometres to learn from others.

The age of the internet changed many things. It eliminated the barrier of access to information. It gave us access to the collective knowledge of humanity.

Information is like water. A cup of it can quench your thirst and empower you. An ocean of it can drown you.

Too much of a good thing can kill you

The challenge we now face is not the lack of a resource, but the abundance of it.

We are surrounded by it.
We are blinded by it.
We are drowning in it.

Imagine for a moment, that we are a boat navigating the high seas.

Everything we need and could ever want to know is in the water. If we blindly collect everything we see, we'll sink.

In order to navigate the seas well and get what we need, we need to do two things.

#1 Make a choice
We need to choose what to collect.

In this ever-changing world, there's a lot we need to keep on top of.

We can spend every waking moment studying but we'll never learn everything there is to learn. Nor can we remember everything we study.

If it's futile to collect everything we see up, and it's futile to try to keep everything we collect, what can we do?

#2 Act on it
We need to ponder what we learn. We need to act on it. Through action, we make what we learn, our own.

We need to pick up what we need from the ocean around us, then incorporate the choicest parts into the ship that is us.

We do this all the time in a passive way. Everything we consume shapes who we are. The extent of this shaping depends on how deliberate we are when we learn, and how we put what we learn, into practice.

Just in Time (JIT) Learning

One way to make efficient use of our time is to choose to learn, what we need, when we need it, so that we may apply it, immediately, to great effect.

For example, let's say you are
having trouble working with your boss…
Or having trouble with your coursework…
Or having trouble with your child…

By making the topic of your learning immediately relevant, you are narrowing your focus and maximising your drive. Since you have a pressing need, you naturally timebox your efforts and apply what you learn for immediate impact.

When Quantity is a Quality of its own

I've had the privilege of being mentored by great managers. David was one of them. He gave me this advice when I asked him how I could learn faster.

If you choose the material well, you will begin to recognize patterns in the problems you're solving. You will start applying concepts you've read about, sometimes without being able to put a name to what you are doing.

You turn information into intelligence.

You are what you consume

Just like our body incorporates the food we eat. Our mind does too.

One of the dark consequences of the Internet age is the abundance of entertainment at our fingertips. It's become too easy to waste our time mindlessly consuming entertainment. We often come out of this consumption tired and numb. The currency we waste is our attention and time.

Endless entertainment consumption can stifle creative thought. For how can we be creative if we never give our mind time to be bored?

Entertainment makes for subpar material, and you really don't want to build your ship with it.

What's worse than subpar material, is material that can poison its occupants. (Watch The Social Dilemma if you haven't, it's a real eye-opener).

Just as you take care of what you feed your body,
you need to take care of what you feed your mind.

Closing Thoughts

In this information overloaded world, we need to be deliberate in what we consume. We make effective use of our time by choosing to learn, just enough, to solve an immediate pressing need. And if we find it difficult to internalize everything we learn, remember, quantity is a quality of its own.