TIME WASTERS AND THE LOW INFORMATION DIET

Today’s blog is really straight forward and dedicated to establishing a ‘Low Information Diet’ or as Ferris states “Cultivating Selective Ignorance”. We all have our own time wasters based on our lifestyles, habits and how we choose to use our time. Reducing time wasters is a topic we all know about, yet seem to all struggle with at least from time to time.

What Is A Low Information Diet?

Basically, the idea is to cut down of doing some basic everyday things we all do that waste time. By becoming more selectively ignorant, we are able to productively take some time we have each day and transfer it from doing one of many common things that waste time and turning that time spent into a more productive thus effective task. Ferris reminds us that a great deal of the information we seek, absorb and think about everyday is actually a total waste of our precious time. More importantly, a lot of the information we process is also quite negative in nature (the majority of main-stream media news), completely irrelevant to our personal goals and quite often way outside our area of influence. A great exercise is to spend two-five days really becoming conscious of what we have either read or watched and honestly answer how much of it was: 1) Very negative 2) Unrelated to a goal we have and 3) Outside of our personal influence. If in fact, what we have either watched or read falls into 2 or more of these categories it is a prime candidate for eliminating all together or at least dedicating a very limited amount of time to each day.

But, How Will I Know if Something Important Happens?

This one is too easy. If there are local, regional or world events that are this important, you will ‘hear’ about it by communicating with other people or find out for yourself even if you only give 15 minutes per day.

What If I Need Important Information?

Sometimes we ourselves want to know about something important. This can fall into a ‘how-to’ category, a headline level news story and many others. Ferris’ example of looking through reader reviews on the topic of how-to is excellent advice. For example, only read accounts of people who have already DONE the task you’re interested in. Search how I did (past tense) a particular tasks versus reading reviews that are either speculation or from people who are in the process of figuring out how to do what you are interested in (other than this blog of course!). That way you’ll get a good perspective from someone who knows how to accomplish a particular task versus those who are simply trying. The other strategy is to only go through large articles, books or reviews for the exact matches to the topic you are looking for rather than reading everything.The other thing to do is to ask people you see throughout the day “So, anything happening in the world today”. No doubt, if something you need to know about is happening other people will tell you.

The Challenge

Here is the challenge to gain perspective on how too much information may in fact be wasting your time. I have done this now for over a week and it is working. Here’s what to do.Begin your one-week media fast.

A. No newspapers, magazines, talk radio etc (music is always OK unless it distracts you e.g., you spend time looking up in iTunes how to purchase the great song you’re listening to)

B. No news websites or surfing for headlines

C. No television except for a very limited amount of pleasure viewing. I choose to use my time to watch the Olympics! Any yes, I did watch the Canada-US hockey game which went over the 1 hour allotment Ferris suggested but come on, it’s the Olympics and it was Sunday

D. No web surfing at your desk unless it relates specifically to a critical task for the day.

Here’s the Good News

You can indulge for 5 minutes a day scanning headlines just in case you really need a media fix. I suggest Google’s Fast Flip, you can see a number of headlines all at once from various sources or you can search a specific topic and see what is being reported in the news. Once you’re done for the day though you must stop and not get bogged down. Close the media sources and go back to your task. Remember to ask yourself what you really wanted to get accomplished today and when you do will you feel satisfied with the work you’ve done http://4hrwwproject.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/part-2-parkinson%E2%80%99s-law-imminent-deadlines-gain-control-of-ballooning-tasks/

Really think about this over the next few days and see if there are times you are spending too much time reading and viewing information that does not produce anything valuable to you yet uses up an enormous amount of your daily time.

The next blog is going to discuss more on this topic but it’s important to have some self perception first if you’re really interested in gaining more time each day through the low information diet.

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