With all of the data that’s available to us on a daily basis, have you ever stopped to ask yourself what is really worth noticing? This is a daily struggle for me. I am an information junkie. A stimulus junkie actually. I love new information and I love things that tickle my brain. The problem with this is that I often take in far more than I’m able to assimilate. The important thing about information, especially as it relates to creating, is not how much we take an but how much were able to assimilate. We must connect it with existing patterns and structures in our mind to enable us to act on our newly found understanding.
So with that in mind, how do you decide what is worth noticing? At times, this may not be important to us, but at especially busy times it can be critical the filter the kind of information do we absorb. Here are a few questions that I will sometimes ask when I’m especially busy and have little conceptual bandwidth to deal with unnecessary stimulus:
1. Does this apply to something I’m working on? (Alternatively, how could this apply to something I’m working on?)
2. Does this apply to my vocation, or what it is I’m about the world?
3. Could this be helpful to something that’s on the immediate horizon?
4. Is this something I need to reference in a few weeks when things slow down?
Granted, sometimes it’s simply important to blow off steam and not to think too hard about stuff. But the precious commodity for most of us – as creative pros – is attention. Asking a few questions can help us better self-limit the kinds of information we’re taking and, and better manage our creative bandwidth so that were applying all of our focus in the right place.
So how about you? Do you have any ways, tips, or tricks for handling stimulus that comes your way? Do tell.
This is something I’ve struggled with as well. I love reading, listening to podcasts, taking in interesting things especially in between chunks of work. I’ll typically do about an hour or so of some work, then read a bit or take in whatever grabs me. I’ll do an hour of work and then 20 minutes of reading. And aside from that focused reading/listening time, I also have a habit of listening to podcasts while cleaning the house…and listening/reading while in transit. This became overwhelming after a while and recently I committed to doing a sort of “brain dump” at night where I ask myself “What did I learn today?” Usually there only a few things that stick with me untl the end of the day – maybe something I read or overheard or something I thought of myself while in the shower. It’s been a good practice for me to get these things down on paper before going to sleep at night. It’s also good for my memory!
Social media has upped the daily input flow. What I appreciate most in your questions and criteria for paying attention is that you have included the aspects of identity and purpose. What we pay attention to creates our reality. If I don’t sort out the trivia from what’s important to me, what does that say about who I am becoming?
That’s true about social media. Facebook, for example, is one thing I try to stay away from during “working hours” as much as possible.
I like how you are organizing things. I’m doing it a little differently. (60 days on twitter so I’m no expert!) I broke down my main interests into six categories: (1)Social Media, Marketing, Advertising – (2)Leading edge and not so leading high technology – (3) Design (covering web design – blogs design- haven’t found much architecture – other cool design things) -(4)Environmental technologies -(5)Entrepreneurs – (6) Current financial information.
I have looked for the best (for me) to follow in each category. I try and limit my time to about an hour+ a.m, an hour p.m. unless I am doing specific research solving specific issues. This hour+ includes email and news websites, though now I use twitter as a news clipping service instead. I probably will have to expand my p.m time and encroach onto my reading time, yes I still read books (about 150 a year) however blogs like yours could replace some of the things I read as they are far more current. Thanks for lots of good info.
My friends and I call it ’shiny information syndrome’. We haven’t found a cure yet, and I guess we really don’t want to. We just want it not to be quite as alluring and ‘must have’. It’s a bit like the call of the sirens to the sailors in greek mythology.
I ask myself very similar questions to you Todd and am finding it very effective. It’s just remembering in time to ask them. And if that doesn’t work and if I am able, I take myself off for a walk. My walk of choice is up to the local dogpark with my dog as there are so many interesting people to talk to. More often than not I come back to my desk with a clear head and a few new ideas! People are so interesting.
One thing I’ve been trying to do this year is to get rid of my RSS feed reader. It used to be my homepage and every time I opened my browser I had little pings of information tempting me.
Now (after getting the idea from a comment by Jason @ 37 signals), I’m just visiting websites in their natural state, and not through my feed reader. I find that I focus better on what I’m reading, I take in less junk, and I naturally tend to remember to visit the sites that are important to me at the times when I have the bandwidth to actually digest them.
An extension of this is less magazines and more books. I love the onion, but I don’t need to pick it up every week.
Great post Todd!
We are so bombarded by media today coming from every which direction that I have asked myself the same questions many times. What information is worth digesting? Very similar to your train of thought Todd, my philosophy has been to simplify all things that I do as much as possible. This is in hopes of having my intuition kick in more often, and we all know how important that is for anyone who wants to create. The interesting thing is that all the answers to the questions we have are already within us – if we would only simplify our lives a little and take the time to notice them. Less can indeed account to more.
As a father of two, I often wonder what this incredible era of information and technology holds for the future of our children. The consuming world of print media, a thousand channels of satellite tv, on demand video, the exponentially expanding internet, the cell phone, the ipod… How do kids, or anyone of us, make sense of all this and can we effectively make use of all this data?I am currently working on a series of images or a photographic project that attempts to explore this idea.
I don’t try to filter…I take in what I think is interesting (very broad : ( ) and let my sub conscious draw on it when necessary. I try not to think about it.