Is information stressing you out?
“Knowledge is power,” you’ve heard it. You may even act on it.
But is it true? Is that bit of knowledge going to put you ahead, at the top of the game, at the front of the pack? Or is it going to stress you out, send you spinning out of control with one more thing—the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Only this time, it’s your back!
Recent studies show that our habits for gathering information are closely tied to the way we gather food. Think about it. When you’re hungry, aren’t you just ready to grab something? When you’re full, the same thing that excited you, doesn’t matter so much. The thrill is gone. The magnetism is over.
How can you turn this into practice? Get strategic about gathering information. Use these three principles to get the info-nourishment you really need.
Field tested principles for getting the information that you need
1. Use the Pyramid
No, I don’t mean the food pyramid. I’m talking about the information pyramid. Imagine a pyramid where the base is data. Input. Little bits of matter but they aren’t information yet. Move up to the next layer: information. One layer higher is knowledge. And at the peak, wisdom. As you move bits of data up the pyramid, their value to you increases.
What happens between each layer of the pyramid? You get involved! What do you have to do to turn data into information into knowledge and ultimately into wisdom? You have to get involved, define what’s valuable, engage with it, and experience it.
As you look at your own information strategies, it’s helps to sort out where you’re spending time. Are you staying at the bottom and only collecting data? Are you moving data and information up the channels towards knowledge and wisdom?
In his wonderful book on web-useability, Don’t Make me Think, Steve Krug quotes a favorite passage from a Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet where…”Dr. Watson is shocked to learn that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t know that the earth travels around the sun. Given the finite capacity of the human brain, Holmes explains, he can’t afford to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones: What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
To put this into practice, keep asking yourself, “Does this matter to me?” With this sword of decision, you’ll gather information that matters most to you.
2. Identify the investment: What’s it worth to you?
This is the information equivalent of the calorie count. How much energy does it take to get the information? What kind of value will it give you? Instead of prescribed calorie tables, you can use a value equation to define how much effort and time it will take to get the information. Again, this is not high-speed calculus, it’s an effort in/value out scale.
Ask yourself, “What’s it worth?” Make an estimate of the effort and time you have to put in. How much effort is it to gather the information? How much time will it take to get it? And ultimately, what’s the value to you?
3. Take smaller bites: Keep the cycle small.
Just like tasting a particularly delicious morsel, savor the information you gather. Keep taking it in small bites. Investigate, capture, record and reflect. Each round of the cycle keeps you focused on what you are doing.
Yes, you’ll taste the information and discover how to actually be present with the gathering. Organizing as you go; filing and managing information so that you can find it again when you need it.
