Information Overload: an Update

Awhile back, I wrote a post about information overload. Specifically, I was referring to the incredible amount of knowledge placed at our fingertips via articles from an almost innumerable amount of sources. I was eager to find a digital solution to streamline the process of finding and reading articles online, and came up with a solution in which I rated the articles I read on a scale of one to five. The highest-rated articles would go into Evernote for safekeeping, and I would write a summary of them at my leisure. By writing the summary, I was more likely to retain the information I deemed worthy of being remembered. The experiment has gone remarkably well, and I’d like to share the results.

First, the rating system was too complicated. Instead of rating an article’s importance on  a scale of one to five, I now simply give it a “yes” or “no.” A “yes” means it goes into the vault (read: Evernote), and a “no” means it’s not worth retaining. This forces me to be dramatically more selective in the information I save, which is the point, in the end. I have a finite amount of time in the world, and only the best should be worthy of my time.

As far as the reading process itself, those articles that I don’t find it necessary to retain still get a brief moment to roll around in my brain. After each article, I simply pause and breathe for a few seconds. I realized that I was going directly from one article to another without even so much as a pause, treating the collection of articles as exactly that... a collection (I wonder if this is a symptom restricted to the “Instapaper Method” of reading, where all of your articles are presented in such a back-to-back format). Instead, each article is its own entity, worthy of at least a moment of reflection after being read. By adding a simple pause, I allow the information in each article to marinate a bit before being engulfed. It’s truly amazing how many of life’s questions can be answered with a few simple breaths.

Those articles that I would like to save, of course, end up in Evernote, and as it turns out, I now have a collection of the most wonderful writings that tend to help me form my opinion of my reality at any given moment in time- a personal treasure of the most delicious prose, which I find myself occasionally opening to dig around in. I can’t help but liken this to the old Disney cartoon- Scrooge McDuck doing the backstroke in his pile of money. The feeling, to me, is the same. This collection truly is a treasure, because words are what I truly adore. With this method, I’ve finally found a way to give those words the respect they deserve.

Incidentally, if you’re interested, I’ve made this collection of mine public. You can browse my treasure trove, broken down into the following categories (summaries not included):

• Design
• Inspiration
• Literature
• People
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Religion
• Self-Knowledge
• Tech
• Web
• Words
• Other

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Happy reading.

Information Overload

I started today with a simple, albeit lofty goal: cure information overload.  The problem is this: I read too many articles, and the more I read, it seems, the less information I retain. Here is my solution (perhaps "experiment" is more appropriate).

First, let me explain my "readflow"- that is, the way that I consume online articles. The process is as streamlined as possible. Most all of the information I consume is fed to Google Reader, so I don't have to constantly scour the web for items of interest. When I come across an article I'd like to read, I tag it "instapaper", and via this recipe from ifttt, that article is automatically fed to my Instapaper account, which is set up to deliver a compilation of all of my unread articles to my Kindle every Friday morning. It sounds like a lot of work, but once it's set up, the result is remarkably friction-free, and therein lies the bulk of the problem.

It's a remarkable time we live in, having access to so much invaluable information. Want to read the latest article from a professor of philosophy at Berkley? How about catching up on neuroscientists' latest claim of eradicating the concept of free will? Perhaps you want to catch up on NFL news, or find out whether the latest HBO series is worth watching? It's all at your fingertips. Be careful, though- if you're not selective enough, you'll soon be reading so many articles your brain may feel flooded. This is my problem.

Here, I hope, is the solution: I will begin to rate each article I read on a simple scale of one to five, based on how important it is to me that I retain the information contained in each article. If given a one, it's not important enough to spend any more time on. If given a five, I thoroughly enjoyed the text, and would like to retain as much as possible. Here's what I'll do based on my ratings:

• For a rating of (1), no further action is needed. The text does not intrigue me.
• For a rating of (2), I'll simply say, out loud, a very brief summary of the article, focusing on the bullet points.
• For a rating of (3), I will give a slightly in-depth summary (again, this is out loud, to myself). 
• For a rating of (4), I will "bookmark" this article in my mind, and make it a point to bring it up in conversation (actual, face-to-face conversation) the next time I'm with someone to whom the topic may be interesting. 
• For a rating of (5), I will star the article in Instapaper, which, via Instapaper's settings, sends the article to my Evernote account). From Evernote, I can write a summary of the article, at the end of the article itself. This way, all of the most important articles (and only the most important articles) are all in Evernote, with a personal summary at the end of each.

Each tactic is designed to increase memory retention based on the importance of the article. Obviously, I'm much more likely to retain information from a text in which I wrote a summary than one in which I simply verbalized the bullet points and moved on.

I'll use this tactic for a month or so, and give an update on how well it works.