Eating Smarter
There are lots of ways to consume information smarter. Here are a few tricks I’ve found.
1. Twitter: Use a sorting application like HootSuite to view multiple Twitter feeds and monitor key words like #design or #strategy. This will allow you to find the right people to follow for the topics you’re interested in. Once you have a nice group to follow, create lists to organize them into meaningful groupings. This will make it easier to keep up with the enormous information buffet that is Twitter.
2. Blogs: Use an RSS reader like “Google Reader” to feed all your favourite blogs/article based sites into. This eliminates the need to visit each site individually, and gives you a quick overview of what topics are new and interesting.
Some personal favourites:
- Mitch Joel
- Seth Godin
- Boag World
- Smashing Magazine
- Design Depot
- Abduzeedo
3. Books and audio: Personally I don’t seem to have time to read books (I wish I did). I also have a long commute. So I make use of the driving time to listen to audio books and podcasts and use a dictation software like “Dragon” to record my thoughts for later. However when I can, I like reading on the iPad. It gives me the ability to search and write annotations while I read. It’s a great asset to be able to go back and refer to a page/article with my own added notes. Currently I am listening to “Trust Agent” by Chris Brogan. It’s a great listen with tons of wonderful and insightful views on what it means to be a trust agent.
Some Personal Favourites:
- Trust Agent by Chris Brogan
- Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug
- Poke the Box by Seth Godin
Another GREAT way to feed on all this information is an iPad app called Flipboard. You can port Twitter feeds, RSS feeds-just about anything-and you flip through it like a magazine. Just amazing!
Consuming information is great but being able to regurgitate it is life changing. I use Evernote to keep track of bits and pieces of information that I want to recall or that will be useful at some point down the road.
Take a look at your life and see if there are any time gaps that can be filled. Then choose a method of consumption that best suits your available time. Whether that’s a little audio snack, or a three course meal of reading, writing and video watching completely depends on how hungry you are.
How do you consume information? What do you use to sort through the mess and make it easier to keep up? Would love to hear your tricks and tips.
