How To Keep Up With The Flow Of Information

November 2, 2009 · 13 comments

BIG INFORMATION FLOW

There are literally hundreds of new links everyday being announced on Twitter, Facebook, and other link aggregators like designbump or designmoo, but the question is: how to keep up with this information flow and most important, how to get something out of all these articles and resources?

1. BE SELECTIVE & ORGANIZE

First, you need to be selective in what sources you want to pay attention to and keep on your RSS feed or daily blog visits. This will instantly help you separate the really important from the not so ‘epic’ stuff. It’s important to check out new sources but if you didn’t like what you saw make sure you only lose your time once.

Tip: It’s important to surf around for new sources and people but make sure you don’t get lost in the flow. Look at the clock!

Organize your selected sources in categories for quicker access to specific interests.

2. WRITE IMPORTANT THINGS DOWN

When you are reading an article, tutorial or other tips post, make sure you have a notebook (maybe a stylish moleskine!) to write down important topics you want to keep in your mind or check out again later. Writing things down will help you understand and memorize points of interest as well as allowing you to have a cool journal for reference out of the house.

3. FOCUS

Don’t just surf through 20 posts every day without a plan. If you want to actually learn from a tutorial or take in some knowledge from an article, stop 10mins or the time necessary for it and actually focus on the task. Forget twitter and phone for a second and give the source the proper attention necessary to get something out of it.

4. SHARE & DEBATE

IF you find something cool, interesting or controversial, share it with friends or co-workers and debate the topic. You can learn a lot from the other person view on the subject and the fact you will take some time to debate it will make the important points settle down on your head and not simply vanish 30mins after you read about it.

5. SAVE FOR REFERENCE

Sometimes you just don’t have the necessary time or focus on the moment, or you want to check that tutorial, resource or article later on. Keep a nice favorites folder organized with good resources you can come back and check later. It will save you precious searching time. Make sure you don’t lose 1hour searching for that cool pattern you saw “the other day”!