The Renaissance Perspective: Harder, Not Easier, In the Wired World

I’m going to interrupt my usual Sunday analysis of something out of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s or the Financial Times to bring you a deep throught: staying ahead of the information wave is hard. Really, really hard, especially if you want to be a multi-dimensional, well-read, interested and interesting individual. Sure, if you want to geek out on any one thing, i.e., business, technology, the arts, foreign affairs, etc., it is a formidable but achievable task, especially given the tools and technologies at our disposal. But to actually ingest a broad array of information from wide variety of sources on a range of topics, this, my friends, is becoming ever more difficult. What do I read first, mainstream media in print (newspapers, magazines, newsletters, etc.), my feed reader with blogs and online mainstream news media, or maybe the comments on some good boards on topics that interest me? And what about podcasts? And Internet radio? And, oh yes, video? And there are literally thousands of new and relevant items each and every day, and this in my native tongue. What about if, say, I want to go deep on retail; doesn’t information from the Chinese BBS matter? Of course it does. Truth is, I find it a challenge just trying to manage stuff related to things directly in my areas of focus. There is so much more I want to read and know, because there is just so much good stuff out there. However, these 24 hour days are a painful limitation on what I can consume, not to mention those arising from capacity and processing constraints of my cerebral cortex.

So why this missive? Because it seems to me that we as individuals need to make clear choices, when it used to be that the choices were so easy. In the days of yesteryear, one could read a handful of the highest quality print news publications of the world, go to a smattering of cultural events (music, art, theater, etc.), read some good books, chat with learned people, and you’d pretty much be a well-rounded, erudite individual. Today you can do the same thing, except you’d be missing an enormous amount of what’s truly vibrant in the information landscape, the countless number of online conversations taking place every day by people with interesting information and perspectives that can enrich you as a sentinent being. That said, trying to digest all of this information is exceedingly difficult, especially when you are trying to consume it across multiple disciplines. It’s just not easy. So what’s the answer, focus on a few types of sources, consume them well, and be done with it? Or to cast a broad net, trying to assimilate the panoply of valuable content that’s out there but only going so deep due to the limitations of time and comprehension? Finally, should one simply say “I’m just going to stay current on X” (whatever X is for you) and conquer the information problem through specialization and focus?

I frequently find myself stuck among these three worlds, grappling with how much content I can reasonably consume across several domains without driving myself nuts. And as a result, I feel like I am doing a crappy job at all three things; neither deep, nor broad, nor particularly focused. Trying to bite off more than I can chew, I guess. I’m not sure if I am alone in seeking to manage this personal conflict. But what I do know is that the Internet and the Information Revolution, for all of its wonder and power, is making me feel a step behind the times. But shouldn’t all this information be making me feel a step ahead of the times and better informed?  Hmmm.

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COMMENT:

AUTHOR: Yaser Anwar

EMAIL: yaser@yaseranwar.com

URL: http://www.yaseranwar.com

DATE: 07/02/2007 02:49:20 AM

A good post on a topic not talked about often yet almost everyone suffers from the Information overload problem. You’re right, there is just too much information for one to consume within a 24 hour period. 

What I like to do is prioritize depending on what can make me money.

1) The Economist/WSJ/Bloomberg/FT

2) Business Monitor (has outstanding global macro coverage)

3) Zacks and IBD

4) A handful of blogs i.e. Big Picture, IA, Trader Feed, Tech Curnch and few more.

5) Following up on my watch list of 5-10 stocks I like to know inside out by reading as much as humanly possible.

I’ve tried many times to read as much as possible about diverse topics, but I’ve noticed I can never keep up to date on that topic. Every now and then casual reading is cool, but there’s just so much one has to know in their respective field, there is barely any time for anything else.

I’m glad though your blog touches on many aspects- from doing business to trading and derivatives to hedge funds- this blog is my # 1 source for up to date and accurate info on Wall Street trends.

I think best way for people to tackle this problem is concentrate and focus on a select few topics and decide whether the opportunity cost is worth it or not.

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COMMENT:

AUTHOR: NM

EMAIL: nihalf@gmail.com

URL: 

DATE: 07/02/2007 05:41:39 AM

True that. Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between fact and opinion? the universe of facts expands far slower than that of opinion - talk is cheap, especially online. A bloomberg terminal or even perhaps a google news/yahoo news search could provide the ‘hard’ facts on a topic. Within opinion, weighting different opinion providers as according to their quality (as i do with this blog :-)) is perhaps a solution? I do not think it is possible to absorb (meaningfully) all the information generated in a single day on most topics. What do others think?

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COMMENT:

AUTHOR: Tristan Louis

EMAIL: blog@tnl.net

URL: http://www.tnl.net

DATE: 07/02/2007 02:16:30 PM

it’s something I’ve been pondering too and I basically came away with read more, write less. 

From my standpoint, the way to stay current comes in several arenas:

1. Print

Books and magazines. Those are now divided into 1 hour of reading every morning and 3 hours every night. I scan the paper’s headlines (business and front section of the NY Times, front section of the WSJ), dive in on about 5 stories per day per paper and leave the rest aside. On the books end, I try to read at least 1-2 books a month.

2. Online

This is divided into 4 parts: RSS feeds, email, IM, and aggregators like techmeme. A glance at techmeme in the morning, as well as an hour of reading RSS feeds before work. Then a couple of hours throughout the day and about 3 hours/night catching up on those feeds. Email is divided into both work and home. Work is primarily BBery driven reading (so looking at it as disruption) and home is divided into 2 sessions: one in the morning before work (scan, sort) and one in later in the day (reply to sorted mail). IMs are mostly read-only, except as needed. 

As a general rule, I’ve discovered that the most RSS feeds I can consume is averaging between 300 and 320 so when I go north of that, some feeds have to go. 

With that approach, I read roughly 1500 items per day across a wider range of subjects (a sampling of the more public feeds I read can be found at http://www.bloglines.com/public/TNLNYC )

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