Link: Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading is a Waste of Time | Nat Eliason

Below are my takeaways from reading this.

Focus on consuming information that you know you need right now

Trying to consume everything to learn something, is not the best use of time. It is better to consume information that you know you need right now. Consuming information that you might need in the future, in other words reading just in case you will need it, is a waste of time.

Avoid the noise

Conventional wisdom says that you should follow what people in your industry are talking about tactics-wise, but it’s just noise. You should have the strategy and tactics that you’re working on, and then you should execute on them. Constantly listening to and checking what other people are doing doesn’t help you stay focused–it just makes you question yourself.

This is true. And while the author was talking about his job as far as context goes, I see this being applicable to a lot of things in life. It is applicable to blogging, to parenting, to dieting, etc... Not to say that checking up on what the current trend is wrong per se, but ultimately you need to think through and decide what you want to do on your own. Constantly checking up on what others in the industry are doing, saying or thinking, will only make you question yourself everyday.

Stop following sites or blogs that publish content everyday

The Problem of Frequency

As a general rule, the more frequently a site publishes about tactics (marketing, personal finance, weight loss, etc.), the less you should listen to it.

No topic is sufficiently complex that you need new information on executing on it every day. Getting in shape requires doing a few very simple things every day for months, not finding a new 13 minute 6 step workout every day so you can have a butt like today’s hot celebrity.

The author does make an exception for sources of information that time and time again, produces high quality content. However normally, these sources of information don't publish content very often. Meaning, if you follow a site or blog or person who publishes new posts every day, then the content probably isn't all that high quality.

Prioritize timeless content over something new

We have a fascination with consuming new articles, new blog posts, new videos, etc... But we should really be taking into account the Lindy rule when deciding what information to consume. Applying this rule means you prioritize timeless content over something new. The idea being, timeless content that you read now, will still be applicable for years to come. On the other hand, new articles haven't proven themselves yet to be a source of timeless knowledge or information.

Focus on Just In Time Learning

In school, we develop the habit of consuming information just in case. That’s how we are taught anyways. We attend classes on various topics with the whole idea of making us as ready as possible for the real world once we graduate. However once you get a real job, you'll find that you don't need to use everything that you learned in school. Most of the time, you have to focus on very specific topics that you need to master to make progress at work. That's where the idea of just in time learning comes into play. You focus only on information that helps you right here and now. You ignore the rest of the “just in case” information that you think might be handy, but are not relevant to your current situation.

Rule for avoiding information overload

1 Rule to Fight Infomania

If it doesn’t answer a specific question you’re currently asking, cover philosophical knowledge, or entertain you, then don’t read it.

If you are trying to avoid information overload like me, this might be the only rule you need to follow, or at the least, one of the fundamental rules to follow.

Only dig through blogs and websites when you have a question

Only dig through blogs and websites when you have a question. You're basically in research mode during that time, which is the mode you want to be in to answer the question you have. But otherwise, ignore or unfollow blogs, websites, newspapers, channels, or other sources of information that only serve to clog up your feed during the day.

Stop consuming information from the internet once your question has been answered

And lastly... You should stop consuming information from the internet once your question has been answered and you have an idea of what you need to do going forward.

Tags: #Bookmarks #DigitalMinimalism #Productivity

Link: The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps

Below are my two takeaways from reading this.

Make better use of idle time with a reading list

In this article, Tiago Forte quotes David Allen on the benefits of having an organized reading list available all the time. The reason being, is that life is full of these random moments where we don't have anything to do. Having an organized reading list can come in handy during those moments. It is better to spend that time reading something good, than to spend that time browsing social media or consuming junk information.

Use waiting periods before reading new content

“Waiting Periods” is an interesting idea shared in this article. In essence, it's basically a tactic you use, to force yourself to wait a little bit, before you read that article that you think you really want to read. It's similar to the advice to wait one day before making a big purchase.

The idea is to give you time to evaluate your decision as to whether the article is really worth reading or not. Chances are, after a day or two, the same article that was so interesting a few days ago, might turn out to be totally irrelevant to your interests now.

Combine this idea of “Waiting Periods” with the use of a to-read list and you'll cut down on the number of new content you think you need to consume.

Tags: #Bookmarks #DigitalMinimalism #Productivity #TiagoForte

It is a pretty long read, but I think it's worth your time. Especially if you have overflowing email inboxes like me. If you find yourself doubting whether it's worth your time, I suggest scrolling all the way down to the “Fifth, practice making triage decisions” section. In there you will see how everything comes together. It will give you a good idea of whether this approach will actually work for you or not.

Link: One-Touch to Inbox Zero: How I Spend 17 Minutes Per Day on Email

In this post, I share some of the notes I wrote down from when I read it. To an extent, you can think of these notes as literature notes.

Use an app that allows you to forward/send emails to it. This allows you to clear the email off your inbox, while still keeping it in a place where it can be read at a later time.

In the guide, the author mentions using EverNote for this. I found that you can do the same thing with OneNote.

One thing I don't do, but is mentioned in the guide, is to always start with the oldest email. I always start with the newest one... Hmmm, maybe that's why I can never clear out the older emails I have in my inbox?

Another idea I ran into, that I should probably apply to my note-taking workflow, is to funnel everything into one inbox.

Right now, the notes I take when I'm not at home, are either saved on OneNote on my phone, or on an Obsidian vault on a different PC/laptop. I need to consolidate and use just one app for all these notes away from home.

In that case, writing down notes on OneNote via web browser on different PCs/laptops and on my phone seems to be the best option right now.

Tags: #Bookmarks #Productivity #NoteTaking #TiagoForte

Got back my Mazdaspeed3 last Saturday. I'm glad to have it back. But I also have to say that I was so spoiled by that CX-5 turbo loaner car. It was a really good car!

Anyway, cost to repair the leak in the Mazdaspeed3 transmission was $1,071. It was actually the transmission shifting mechanism that was leaking, not the transmission itself. Thankfully it was an affordable repair bill. And that's thanks to an emergency fund set up for times like this.

So, no need to trade in my car then. Though that CX-5 turbo did make me think twice about trading in... Is still making me think twice LOL!

Started reading the Lord Of The Rings 50th Anniversary Edition book. This was a much appreciated Christmas gift from my brother.

There's apparently a way to forward/send emails into OneNote. Got this idea after reading Tiago Forte's One-Touch to Inbox Zero: How I Spend 17 Minutes Per Day on Email, which is a great read by the way.

Here's some good parenting advice from an Instagram post on how to handle your kids when they lie to you.

Up to Episode 6 now of Vincenzo and man, what a good show! There were a couple of interesting things in Episode 6 that caught my eye, most notably the interaction between a Buddhist and Catholic character.

There's this scene where a Buddhist monk was carrying a huge wooden cross, like Jesus was on his way to crucifixion. The monk was carrying the abandoned cross to donate to a nearby church. It struck me as a beautiful scene, where people can cast aside their differences and just be kind to one another.

That scene then led to a conversation between Vincenzo and a Buddhist monk regarding enlightenment.

Vincenzo: “If I go live somewhere far away, like in the middle of the ocean, will the anger inside me disappear?”

Buddhist monk: “It doesn’t matter where you live. What matters is whether you still have the anger inside you or not.”

Vincenzo: “Does that mean that I need to achieve enlightenment?”

Buddhist monk: “The only way to get rid of your anger is by fighting it. Stand your ground and fight back. Enlightenment is what you get when you win that battle.”

Tags: #Weeknotes #Cars #Mazda #CX5 #Mazdaspeed3 #LordOfTheRings #Productivity #Parenting #TVShow #Vincenzo

I've also taken to adding articles/posts that I want to read, into my Are.na Bookmarks/Reading List bucket. This seems to help decrease the unease that I feel, from not being able to immediately read interesting articles/posts. Since I know that I will eventually get to them someday in the future, it allows my brain to relax and focus on the current task at hand.

Since I have been trying to read less, a problem that I'm running into is what to do with my free time when I can't read. I would prefer to work on my digital garden, but I cannot do so when I'm not at home. This is because my notes in Obsidian, while synced to a Github repo, are not easy to work with via my phone. So, I now have a lot more time to think through things because I'm trying to read less, but during those times I can't work on my digital garden. That's one big limitation with my Obsidian setup.

That said, maybe I should look at it as a benefit in some way. I shouldn't be using my phone that much anyway.

I shouldn't be scared or embarrassed of publishing/sharing my digital garden online. This is because I will never get feedback on my thoughts and ideas if I keep them private. Not getting feedback means not knowing whether I'm on the right track or not. I need feedback on what I'm doing to see how I can get better.

If seeking feedback is to be desired, then wouldn't that be a valid use case for sharing posts on social media? I mean if the goal is to get more feedback, can you do better than social media in that regard?

Now to be clear here, I'm talking about sharing posts on social media. Not spending time on social media. Totally different things.

You should link to new notes from existing notes. This enables an existing note to grow, by adding more related notes to it.

Reference: Zettelkasten Method: How to Take Smart Notes for Knowledge Management

While trying to build my digital garden, I keep running into this issue where I don't know where to put my software development notes. These are notes that I want to keep, but at the same time, I don't think they are considered permanent notes. For instance, a listing of the CSS frameworks I need/want to learn is not exactly a permanent note. And I don't know where to put them. They don't exactly fit into my Zettelkasten folder, nor do they fit into my Reference folder.

Just realized that I have this habit of trying to turn all notes I take into permanent notes. They don't have to be. Not all notes are meant to become permanent notes. I need to remember that.

The following are my literature notes from reading How to Take Smart Notes – One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens last week:

“Nothing motivates us more than the experience of getting better.”

Seeking feedback, both good and bad, is one of the most important factors for success says psychologist Carol Dweck.

Adding comments to a blog is one way to get/seek feedback. — Page 53

Rewriting in your own words what you’ve just read in a book, is one way to gauge your understanding of it. — Page 54

We don’t get better at multitasking the more we do it. We just think we get better. But that’s because we don’t test ourselves to see if we actually perform better while multitasking. — Page 59

Separate the different tasks of writing and focus on each one explicitly. For instance, while trying to write, don’t be trying to proofread at the same time. Also don’t write as if you’re writing something ready to be published already. That will slow you down. I think that’s what slows me down. — Page 62

When writing something, like a paper or essay, it helps to have an outline in front of you, so you’re not tempted to think about what else you need to write. — page 62

It is easier for us to remember things that are connected to other thoughts and ideas. This is one thing the Zettelkasten helps us with, making connections between notes. — Page 69

Our brains will stop nagging us about unfinished tasks if we write them down and have a system in place that will guarantee that we won’t forget about the tasks. — Page 70

It’s okay if I end up writing longer literature notes, as long as they get turned into permanent notes in the future. — Page 76

Ahrens mentions that literature notes are usually written with an eye towards what's already in the slip-box. This goes against advice I read about writing literature notes mainly against its original context. — Page 76

Our brains are drawn to information that confirms what we already know. This can make it hard to be selective when it comes to note taking. It also feeds into our confirmation bias. — Page 79

Writing notes by hand is superior to digital note-taking. — Page 80

Writing down notes using our own words can tell us how well we understand something. — 85

If re-reading is not ideal for learning, then what is? Elaboration. And that’s what the Zettelkasten forces you to do. — Page 89-90

Apparently we can only hold on to at most 4-7 items in our head at any one time. So does this mean that having to juggle multiple websites and deciding what to post on each one can be taxing on my brain?

Maybe that's one of the reasons I get exhausted from maintaining multiple websites. Deciding what to post on one of them drains my mental stamina more than I realize. There’s too many decisions to make with multiple websites.

An idea: Instead of bundling everything up into one big Weeknotes post, maybe I should pick just one topic per day of the week to include in a Weeknotes post. That probably means I will leave out so many other journal entries. So, maybe a compromise is to pick at most 3 entries per day to include in a Weeknotes post. There's probably a number of ways I can do this. I'll just have to try it out and see what number works for me.

Judging from the amount of content in this Weeknotes post, I obviously did not implement that idea. I was lucky enough to have enough time to actually write this post. But the next time I'm short on time, I will try it out.

An idea: Create a “Software Development” version of my Weeknotes series, where I can focus on software development content.

What is driving this is my need to make searching for software development content on this site easier. I don't want to to dig through a long Weeknotes post to find a specific software development related entry.

“Sometimes it’s not the message. It's the timing.” ~ Tal’kamar, The Light of All That Falls

No matter how convincing an argument or message is, if the one receiving the message is not ready for it, then it won’t be received well.

Sometimes people need to change, before they can look at the same message in a different light. So it’s not that the message has changed, but that the person has changed.

Kinda like how I changed my viewpoint on adding comments to this journal.

If Jesus, the son of God, regularly took time to pray, shouldn’t we do the same?

You know that thing you do when you end your prayer? Saying amen? Don’t say amen as a way to disconnect from God. Say amen as a call to action.

So now, instead of ending your prayer and going back to your regular life, say amen and use it as a cue to start doing God's work.

Reference: Sunday Mass Homily by Father Tony Lackland

A good read this week was Out of the Matrix: Early Days of the Web (1991) by Daniel Kehoe.

Thirty years later, it is easy to overlook the web’s origins as a tool for sharing knowledge. Key to Tim Berners-Lee’s vision were open standards that reflected his belief in the Rule of Least Power, a principle that choosing the simplest and least powerful language for a given purpose allows you to do more with the data stored in that language (thus, HTML is easier for humans or machines to interpret and analyze than PostScript)...

Second time I ran into this rule of least power. The first time was in Al Khan's information overload article.

How do I apply this “rule of least power” to my career as a software developer? I ask because I specialize as a C#/.NET Developer. Maybe the answer is to not specialize and learn more programming stacks?

... Still, I hope its utility as a platform for commerce does not eclipse our original vision of the web as a means for sharing the world’s knowledge.

So the web was originally made to share knowledge. And I think that's what we do when we blog. At least, that's what I hope I'm doing on this journal — sharing knowledge.

That's also totally the opposite of what we do on social media. There's more sharing of highlight reels going on there, than there is sharing knowledge.

By the way, the author of this article also created Yax, which seems to be a simple website builder. Might be worth checking out.

Notes from The One Thing You Need to Learn to Fight Information Overload by Al Khan:

Alright, you might think starting with a thick old book might be too farfetched right now, though. But luckily, great thinkers have been old-school-blogging since Montaigne. Yep, they wrote essays. They’re filled with so much wisdom that you can finish them in under 2 hours and still get more than that of a modern book. Most of them are translated pretty well, so you can still get their ideas in more easily understood forms. I get my essays on Gutenberg.org and push them to my Kindle for reading. Awesome stuff.

Great idea on finding essays to read from great thinkers of the past.

Also, one last thing: Read books and essays made by the inventors, discoverers, thinkers, and field founders. They are most likely to change how you think.

This advice makes sense. Books from inventors, discoverers, thinkers, and field founders will probably change how you think, simply because they themselves changed the game in their respective fields.

One of the best ways to learn something is to try and teach it to someone else. This is where a blog can help.

When I write a “how to” blog post, I'm not doing it for the sole purpose of teaching other people. I do it as a way to solidify my understanding of what I've just learned. If readers learn something from my post, that's just icing on the cake.

So I've had my photo-blog/microblog for a few weeks now. I'm still asking myself, what am I gaining from doing this, other than the satisfaction of sharing a sky photo? I don't know.

I still think that $5 a month for a hobby photo-blog is too much. If it was my main website or blog, then I can justify paying $5 a month for it. But I'm having a hard time justifying it for a hobby photo-blog.

And I honestly don't know why I keep on doing it. I'd rather be working on my digital garden, but I get this urge to share sky photos ever so often. And I'm fine with that, if it doesn't cost me anything. But in this case, it does...

Maybe it's time to go back to my Write.as powered photo-blog. I don't pay extra for that one, since you get 3 blogs for one Write.as Pro subscription.

Having one blog that covers all sorts of personal topics (instead of one blog per topic) is like having a newspaper. Not everyone is expected to read everything on it.

A personal blog is made for you and not the readers... so if you want to cover a broad range of topics in there, you can do so.

References: https://bloggingwithoutablog.com/blogs-is-one-enough/#comment-147610 https://bloggingwithoutablog.com/blogs-is-one-enough/#comment-147635 https://bloggingwithoutablog.com/blogs-is-one-enough/#comment-147666

The Dallas Mavericks get a great, come from behind win against the Atlanta Hawks.

I've noticed a change in the rotation by the Mavs. Luka usually plays the whole first quarter. The past few games though, he's been going to the bench a lot earlier. Like he would get subbed out in the middle of the first quarter. I think this allows other players in the team to take point and find their own rhythm.

This is good because they're no longer solely relying on Luka making plays for them. It seems to get other players going offensively earlier in the game, which helps Luka out later in the game.

It also seems to be working so far as the Mavs have been winning, barely winning at times, but still winning their games recently. They also won the game against the Pelicans. That means they're on a 4 game winning streak right now.

Tags: #Weeknotes #Basketball #Blogging #Bookmarks #DigitalGarden #DigitalMinimalism #LiteratureNotes #Productivity #Spirituality #Zettelkasten

Link: How to Focus in the Age of Distraction

Reason #2: filtering out information takes effort.

Contrary to common sense, ignoring things is not a passive mental process.

Researchers have found that it takes energy to ignore irrelevant stimuli.

In other words, ignoring something still takes a toll on your mental stamina. Think of it this way, we wake up in the morning and our mental stamina bar is at 100% full. If you have to go through the day trying to ignore irrelevant stimuli, your mental stamina bar will probably be down to 50% by lunchtime. By the time you go home, it may be down to 10%. Then you end up just getting fast food because you can't think of anything else better to eat. And you crash down on your sofa to binge-watch Netflix, because your brain is too tired to do something else.

Find 2 Wildly Important Goals (and put them where you'll see them)

In 4 Disciplines of Execution, the authors recommend finding 2 wildly important goals (WIGs).

WIGs are goals that are so important that if you achieve them, everything else will likely work out.

I have heard of Warren Buffet's goal setting method before. This post seems to suggest combining that with this Wildly Important Goals concept. Maybe use Warren Buffet's goal setting method to define your long term goals. Then pick two from that list using the Wildly Important Goals concept. The two goals would then be your current focus/target. Not a bad idea.

This post is Day 40 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.

Tags: #Bookmarks #DigitalMinimalism #Productivity #SelfImprovement #100DaysToOffload

What do I use as a work journal? I have a medium sized, ruled, Moleskine 007 Limited Edition notebook. It has rounded corners, an elastic band to keep it closed and comes with a bookmark ribbon. I bought it at Barnes and Noble. Other stores carry Moleskine notebooks, but only Barnes and Noble seem to offer the limited edition ones.

How do I use it? In general, I use it anytime I need to write something down at work. More specifically:

• I bring it to meetings and use it to write down meeting notes.
• When I'm in my cubicle, I keep it right in front of me. I write down whatever work related idea I come up with.
  • For example, realizations or insights about algorithms or design patterns. Why the current code works and the previous didn't. New SQL queries that will prove helpful in the future. Etc...
    
  • I keep a daily schedule on my journal.
  • I keep a weekly summary.
  • I record the number of code reviews I've done during the day.
  • I record the time I arrived at the office and the time I leave.
  • I list down the tasks I am working on for the day. I migrate unfinished tasks to the next day so I don't lose track of them.
  • I write down a list of things I need to test for a specific task. Sometimes while working on a task, an important test scenario comes to mind and I will write it down so I don't forget. It serves as a test case document of sorts.
  • I track Sprint schedules and deployment/release dates.
  • I use it to help me solve programming problems.

What benefits have I noticed from keeping a work journal?

• The biggest benefit is being able to reference my daily schedule. Being able to quickly check what I should be doing at a specific time during the day, allows me to stay focused at work.
  • A related benefit to that is being able to track how many “deep work” hours I had for the day, as opposed to time spent doing something else, like getting stuck in meetings, doing compliance trainings, responding to emails, etc...
• Another benefit is not losing track of bugs, issues or tasks that I needed to work on. In the past, there were a number of bugs that fell through the cracks because the discussion was done on email, but everyone was so busy that it wasn't tracked accordingly. Tracking those in a work journal stops that from happening because I usually spot them when migrating tasks over to the next day.
• Another benefit is the use of the work journal to help solve programming problems. I've mentioned this in my previous journal entry.
  • A related benefit to that is that I can go through old entries to see how I solved problems in the past.
• Another benefit is it stops me from having to use my phone as a note taking tool when I'm not on my desk. There is a time and place for the use of phones at the office; using phones while in a meeting is not one of them. Sure you could have been typing down the bug number or ticket number that you needed to look at later. However, to the CEO who happened to walk by the conference room while the meeting was ongoing, it will look like you weren't paying attention. That's not a good look. It will also come off as being rude to the meeting organizer or whoever is talking at the moment.

Tags: #Work #Productivity

My usual routine when I got to work was to take out my phone and place it on my desk, right in front of me, between the keyboard and my monitors. The idea being that I would easily spot any notification and can act on them.

To the old me, this setup was perfectly fine. Years ago, I was so into apps and staying up to date on my notifications, that I didn't mind having a phone right in front of me. This was partly the reason I switched from a Windows Phone to an iPhone; the notifications system on Windows Phones were subpar and it just didn't have any of the cool apps available on iPhones.

Fast forward to today and having a phone right in front of me at work, does not seem like a good idea at all. It makes it look like I was so willing to distract myself back then, that I would position my phone in such a way that I got a front row seat to distractions all day.

So, as I was researching ways to limit my smartphone usage, I ran into the idea of keeping my phone “out of sight” at work. If I don't see it, I will likely forget about it. At least, that was the idea. I can confirm that this strategy does work, to an extent.

Out of Sight

So instead of keeping my phone right in front of me at work, I began to just keep it in my pocket. This helped decrease the temptation of simply grabbing my phone to mindlessly use it; looking for something to entertain me or to pass the time. However, this did not stop me from getting distracted due to the notifications I was getting from my phone. I have vibration set to on, even in silent mode. So even if the phone was in my pocket, I would still get buzzed when I get notifications.

So, the obvious next step was to turn off most of my notifications. Before I could do that though, I had to go through and remove apps that I no longer needed on my phone, like social media and shopping apps. After that has been done, I went through and turned off most of the notifications except for the important ones, like messages coming from real people and banking and weather alerts. This pretty much took away most of the unimportant notifications that I would usually get throughout my day.

So, at this point, I thought I had done everything I could to minimize distractions from my phone. I was no longer getting numerous notifications throughout the day, and the ones that I did get, were those coming from real people, like text messages from family and friends. At this point I thought I could simply leave my phone in my pocket and not get distracted at work. I was wrong.

• First, with minimal notifications coming from my phone and even if my phone was in my pocket, my mind would still occasionally wander off and the temptation to pull out my phone to find something to do was still there. This was especially noticeable when I still had a browser on my phone.
• Second, an interesting thing started happening. With my phone in my pocket, silent with minimal notifications throughout the day, I started getting “phantom vibrations”. I call them “phantom” because whenever I checked my phone for notifications, I didn't see any. Basically, my body has gotten so used to getting buzzed that it starts to feel like my phone was vibrating, when it just wasn't. The problem here is that not only am I getting distracted, it turns out to be a false source of distraction too. I was getting interrupted for nothing. The vibrations were a form of “tactile hallucination”, to borrow words from a Wikipedia entry for Phantom Vibration Syndrome.
  

Out of Reach

I wasn't sure how to solve these new problems, but I tried stowing my phone in my desk drawer just to see what would happen. The results were pretty amazing! As soon as I placed my phone inside the drawer, I immediately felt less distracted. It's as if my mind switched off a part of it that was tethered to my phone and freed up resources that allowed me to focus more on my work. There were times when I just completely forgot about my phone, only remembering it was not on me when I got up and felt something missing from my left pocket.

It also significantly decreased but didn't completely eliminate the “phantom vibrations” that I was getting. I believe the fact that I don't have the phone on me, means I don't feel it when I move around, which I think helps reduce the sensation of vibrations coming from a phone that is just not there.

Out of Mind

So, you can see from my experience, just having the phone out of sight was not enough to take it off my mind. It had to be out of sight, and out of reach too for me to stop thinking about it.

If you have a problem with trying to stay focused at work and you know your phone is one of the main sources of distraction, I highly suggest keeping it out of sight and out of reach. You can place it in your desk drawer or keep it in your bag. It doesn't matter where you stow it, as long as you don’t have it on your body and you cannot see it, it should be enough to help your mind focus on the task at hand.

#Productivity #DigitalMinimalism