Recently, I cut the number of RSS feeds I follow in half…and I plan to do it again. You see, I have a problem. I feel like if I subscribe to a feed, then I am obligated to reading it. This self-imposed obligation causes unwanted stress in my life.
Stress aside, I felt I had stopped learning. My information overload is not just related to RSS feeds, it pertains to all the information I consume. I began is recognize these symptoms a few months ago. My learning system shutdown. I was reading but not retaining any of it.
Have you experienced this?
No longer able to keep up or retain the information I read….I was forced into taking drastic action. Here’s what I did.
• Google Reader RSS feeds: Reduced my feed count from 250+ to around 100. I used two criteria to make this decision: frequency I fully read the articles and posts I mark as favorites.
• Newsletter E-mail: I made deep cuts here. I unsubscribed from virtually every e-mail list I was on. The amount of e-mail I comb through today is significantly lower. Honestly, I was not reading most of it anyway.
• Push Notifications E-mail: These are all the notifications from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I eliminated all the e-mail associated with the social networks I participate in. By being active on these networks, I still see everything I need to see.
• Newspaper/Magazine Subscriptions: I canceled all of these. I never read the hard copies.
• Books on my bookshelf: I was reading a book a week. I found I read books, placed them on the shelf, and rarely looked at them again. My first wave of clean-up was books that I would grade a “C.” I donated 40+ books to the local library.
Removing all this clutter made a world of difference to my mental state of mind. I felt a tremendous burden was lifted.
Did this do the trick?
The answer is NO!!!! Why? I was still consuming way too much information. Did you notice what I eliminated? That’s right, I only removed the NOISE!!!
I did not address the real problem…information overload. My learning system was still shutdown.
In my search for a better solution, I remembered a passage in a book I read a couple of years ago. The book is Ken Blanchard’s Know Can Do. Blanchard wrote this book in search of helping his readers and speaking audiences retain more of the concepts he was teaching. The learning cycle goes like this. Humans require exposure to a subject six-times before they own the material.
• First exposure: We reject the new material because if conflicts with previous knowledge
• Second exposure: We resist it because we can’t accept it
• Third exposure: We partially accept it, but we still have reservations
• Fourth exposure: We fully accept it because we feel it express what we have been thinking
• Fifth exposure: We begin to use the material in our conversations
• Sixth exposure: We own it and freely pass it along to others
This process is very similar to the coaching training program I went through at Newfield. For each module we learned, we followed a similar process.
• In-person lecture
• In-person practice with classmates
• Conference call lecture
• Reading about the subject
• Writing about the subject
• Teaching the material to a learning group
Did you notice the similarities? Throughout the process I was continually learning new things each time I was exposed to the material. More importantly, I owned the material.
Try it for yourself. Take out a piece of paper and without looking back at this blog post, write 2 or 3 things that stuck out to you.
Finished? Great, now go back to the beginning and re-read this post again. When you get back to this point, write 2 or 3 more impressions. Did you write something different?
Next time, try this exercise with a chapter in a book. I’ll bet you write something different the second time around.
Want to own it? Write about what you read. Verbally share the information with some friends. The more ways you digest and communicate the information, the easier it is to own it.
Finding the right information intake balance is very subjective. My plan is to further reduce what I read and to focus on learning the material I choose to read. I encourage you to explore ways to challenge how you receive, learn, and share information.
What can you do right now to improve your learning process?
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